Gerald Fields, a 35-year-old man, was working a part-time security shift during the early hours of April 30, 1978, at the Wigwam, a private club in northwestern Fairfield County, Ohio. Fields was also known as the Reverend Gerald Fields, and contemporary accounts described him as a clergyman who supplemented his income through security work. What appeared at first to be an isolated attack at a quiet private club would soon become an important piece of one of the most frightening murder
investigations in central Ohio history.
Fields was shot to death with a. 22-caliber firearm while performing his security duties. Investigators recovered spent cartridge casings from the scene, but there was initially little to explain why he had been targeted. No clear personal dispute or relationship immediately connected him to his killer. The attack seemed sudden and random, leaving detectives to consider robbery as a possible motive while searching for anyone who might have seen suspicious activity around the club. The location was in Fairfield County rather than the city of Fairfield in Butler County, a distinction that later became important as authorities compared the killing with other shootings around Columbus, Newark and Granville.
The shell casings found near Fields became the crucial link. Ballistics specialists compared the bullets and casings with evidence recovered from several other murders committed between December 1977 and the spring of 1978. The testing showed that the same. 22-caliber weapon had been used in multiple attacks. Fields’ death was connected to a series that included the murders of Joyce Vermilion and Karen Dodrill outside a Newark café, Robert McCann, Dorothy McCann and Christine Herdman near Columbus, and Jenkin Jones at his rural home near Granville. The victims appeared to have little or nothing in common. Investigators looked for shared employers, churches, clubs, financial dealings and personal acquaintances, but no meaningful connection emerged. The apparently random choice of victims made the killers especially difficult to identify.
Only weeks after Fields was killed, Jerry and Martha Martin were found shot to death in their Franklin County home. Additional ballistics evidence strengthened the conclusion that the murders were part of a connected series. Detectives also determined that two. 22-caliber weapons had been used during at least one of the attacks, raising the likelihood that two people were involved. A reward was offered, and hundreds of tips were examined, but the investigation slowed when none produced a dependable suspect. Fields’ murder and the other killings remained unsolved through most of 1978.
The case finally broke after another man, Joseph Annick, was robbed and murdered in December 1978. Gary James Lewingdon was detained after attempting to use Annick’s stolen credit card at a Columbus-area store. During questioning, Gary admitted involvement in Annick’s killing and implicated his older brother, Thaddeus Charles Lewingdon, in the earlier series of murders. Thaddeus was arrested soon afterward. Investigators said the brothers described selecting victims, wearing masks and gloves, and using. 22-caliber pistols fitted with a homemade silencer. Searches of their residences uncovered firearms and property reportedly stolen from some of the victims, providing physical evidence to support the confessions and ballistic findings.
On December 14, 1978, Gary and Thaddeus Lewingdon were indicted on numerous felony charges. Gary faced 20 counts, including ten murder counts, while Thaddeus faced 17 counts, including nine murders. Prosecutors maintained that robbery was a central motive, although the extreme violence used against the victims led investigators to question whether theft alone fully explained the crimes. The brothers often fired repeatedly even when a single shot would have incapacitated a victim, creating a pattern authorities characterized as deliberate overkill.
Thaddeus Lewingdon was tried in separate proceedings covering the murders attributed to the brothers. In February 1979, he was convicted in the killings of Joyce Vermilion, Karen Dodrill and Jenkin Jones and received three life sentences. In a later proceeding, he was convicted for his participation in six additional murders, the group of charges that included Gerald Fields and the victims killed in Franklin and Fairfield counties. He received six more life sentences. Gary Lewingdon was later tried on charges arising from the ten deaths. A jury convicted him of eight murders but was unable to reach verdicts on two counts. He received eight consecutive life sentences and a substantial fine.
The arrest and prosecution of the Lewingdon brothers brought an end to the uncertainty surrounding Gerald Fields’ death. What had first looked like the unexplained killing of a security guard at a private club was ultimately recognized as one chapter in a yearlong series of robberies and murders carried out across several Ohio counties. Fields had no known personal connection to the brothers and appears to have been selected because he was present at a location they believed they could rob. His murder was solved through the combination of ballistics evidence, recovered stolen property, the arrest following the use of a victim’s credit card and the brothers’ statements to investigators. Both suspects were imprisoned for life, ensuring that neither returned to the community.
