On the night of October 20, 1968, 18-year-old white female Susan Pack was working at a Lawson Milk Company store in Columbus, Ohio, alongside fellow employee Jimmy Stevens and store manager Phyllis Crow. At approximately 10:30 p.m., a white male suspect entered the store unmasked and armed. He proceeded to bind and gag all three individuals before robbing the cash register and safe. After securing the money, the assailant brutally assaulted the victims.
Susan Pack and Jimmy Stevens were both shot in the back of the head and bludgeoned to death. Phyllis Crow was strangled with a wire coat hanger and left for dead, but she survived and later provided critical eyewitness testimony.
Crow, the sole survivor, gave police a detailed description of the attacker and helped create a composite sketch. The following day, she identified Richard Lee Tingler Jr. from a lineup of criminal photographs. Tingler, a white male born in December 1940, had a history of violent crimes and had recently been released from prison. He was charged with multiple counts of murder and armed robbery. Tingler fled Ohio and was placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list in December 1968.
Authorities eventually located Tingler in Dill City, Oklahoma, where he had been living under the alias “Don Williams” and working on a farm. He was arrested on May 19, 1969, without incident. At the time of his arrest, he was armed with a. 25 caliber pistol. Ballistics linked the weapon to the murders of Susan Pack and Jimmy Stevens, as well as to a separate quadruple homicide in Cleveland a month earlier.
Tingler was tried and convicted on six counts of murder, including the killing of 18-year-old white female Susan Pack. He was sentenced to death in 1969, though his sentence was later commuted to life in prison. He died in custody in 1995 from organ failure. The case remains one of Columbus's most brutal and senseless crimes, with Susan Pack remembered as a young victim of a calculated and violent spree.
