Ronald Mahone, a 22-year-old man, was killed during a disturbing multiple homicide in Cleveland, Ohio, on September 16, 1968. His body was discovered in Rockefeller Park beside those of three other victims: 54-year-old tavern proprietor Joseph Zoldan, 26-year-old Raymond Homer, and 21-year-old Martha Lancaster. Early-morning visitors to the park found the four victims arranged side by side, transforming the quiet public grounds into the scene of one of Cleveland’s most shocking crimes of that
era.
Investigators determined that Mahone and the others had been shot in the head, with some of the victims suffering multiple gunshot wounds. Evidence indicated that two different firearms had been used. Authorities believed the violence began during a robbery at Zoldan’s tavern, where the victims were apparently taken captive before being transported to Rockefeller Park. There, away from the tavern and with little chance of escape, they were methodically executed. Mahone’s death was therefore not treated as an isolated shooting but as part of a calculated robbery and four-person slaying.
The investigation eventually identified Richard Lee Tingler Jr., a recently released Ohio convict with a lengthy history of burglary and other offenses, as the suspected gunman. Tingler had been released from prison in February 1968, only months before the Rockefeller Park killings. Investigators later connected him to another deadly robbery committed in Columbus on October 20, 1968, in which 18-year-old Susan Pack and 15-year-old James Stevens were bound, gagged, beaten, and shot to death inside a Lawson Milk Company store. The store manager, Phyllis Crow, was also beaten and strangled with a wire coat hanger but survived and was able to summon help.
As evidence mounted, a federal warrant was issued for Tingler on October 24, 1968, charging him with unlawful interstate flight to avoid prosecution for murder and armed robbery. He disappeared from Ohio and was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list on December 20, 1968. While hiding near Dill City, Oklahoma, he used the alias Don Williams and found work on a farm. Acting on information that the farmworker resembled the wanted fugitive, federal agents and local deputies located Tingler on May 19, 1969. He was found working in a field, carrying an automatic pistol, and surrendered without resistance.
Tingler was returned to Ohio and prosecuted for the six murders attributed to him, including the deaths of Ronald Mahone and the three other people found in Rockefeller Park. He was convicted and sentenced to death in the electric chair in 1969. His death sentence was later reduced to life imprisonment after the United States Supreme Court’s 1972 decision invalidated existing death-penalty procedures across the country. Tingler remained incarcerated until his death from organ failure in a Columbus hospital on March 18, 1995. Although the prosecution brought legal accountability, Ronald Mahone’s life had already been taken in an exceptionally cold and deliberate act, leaving him forever remembered as one of four people killed together in Rockefeller Park.
