Martha Lancaster, a 21-year-old White woman, was one of four people found shot to death in Cleveland's Rockefeller Park on the morning of September 16, 1968. Her body was discovered lying beside those of 54-year-old tavern owner Joseph Zoldan, 26-year-old Raymond Homer, and 22-year-old Ronald Mahone. Each victim had been shot in the head, and some had suffered multiple gunshot wounds. Investigators determined that two firearms had been used in the killings.
Authorities believed the violence began during a robbery at Zoldan's tavern. Lancaster and the three men were apparently taken captive and forced from the business at gunpoint. The group was then transported to Rockefeller Park, where they were arranged side by side and shot. Investigators concluded that the victims were killed to prevent them from identifying the robber. Lancaster was described in later case accounts as a young prostitute, while Homer and Mahone were reportedly part-time bartenders employed by Zoldan.
The investigation eventually focused on Richard Lee Tingler Jr., an Ohio man with a lengthy history of burglary and imprisonment who had been released from custody earlier in 1968. Approximately one month after the Cleveland killings, Tingler was linked to another robbery and double homicide at a dairy store in Columbus. During that attack, 18-year-old Susan Pack and 15-year-old Jimmy Stevens were bound, beaten, and shot in the back of the head. Store manager Phyllis Crowe was also beaten and strangled with a wire coat hanger but survived.
Ballistics testing connected a firearm used in the Columbus murders to one of the weapons involved in the Rockefeller Park killings. Crowe also identified Tingler from a photograph as the man who had attacked her and murdered the two teenagers. A federal warrant charged Tingler with unlawful interstate flight to avoid prosecution for murder and armed robbery, and he was placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list in late 1968.
Tingler fled Ohio and lived under the alias Don Williams while working on a farm near Dill City, Oklahoma. His employer and a neighbor eventually recognized him from a wanted poster and contacted authorities. On May 19, 1969, FBI agents and Washita County sheriff's deputies arrested Tingler at the farmhouse. He was carrying a. 25-caliber automatic pistol but was taken into custody without resistance.
Tingler was prosecuted in Ohio for six murders, including the deaths of Lancaster and the other three victims found in Rockefeller Park. He was convicted and sentenced to death in the electric chair in 1969. His death sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment in 1972 following changes in the legal treatment of capital punishment. Tingler remained incarcerated until his death from organ failure in a Columbus hospital on March 18, 1995.
