White male John Albert Struble, about 46 years old, served as the Chief of Police in Clinton, Illinois. In mid-July 1910, after a string of petty thefts from an icebox on a home's enclosed back porch, he and another officer set a midnight watch.
When a man returned to the porch, they confronted him; a struggle followed, the intruder drew a pistol, and Chief Struble was shot through the head as the suspect broke free and fled into the dark while the other officer fired after him.
Chief Struble died on July 14, 1910, and was later buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Clinton.
The killing rattled the town and galvanized a quick search for the gunman. Within days, deputies held Thomas Andrews of Clinton as a suspect, a development reported across the state press, though nothing tied him conclusively to the shooting.
Another lead surfaced weeks later when an Urbana plumber, Ralph E. Smith, was brought to Clinton under a charge unrelated to the murder but, in reality, as a person of interest in Chief Struble's death; he was soon released and returned home after the suspicion could not be sustained.
Years passed before a stronger break seemed to arrive.
On November 12, 1913, a man picked up in Des Moines, Iowa, for a boxcar break-in told police he had killed Chief Struble and even pointed to a hand scar he said came from the officer's bullet during the porch struggle.
The confession unraveled: the man recanted, a farmer swore he'd been with the suspect in Sciota, Illinois, the night of the shooting, and a jury acquitted him.
No other suspects were ever identified, leaving the murder of a 46-year-old male chief of police hauntingly unresolved in the community he served.
