In the cold Chicago winter of 1945, a 38-year-old woman named Blanche Zimmerman was found dead in her room at the Atlantic Hotel. The date was February 17, and at first glance, her death may not have immediately screamed murder. An autopsy would later determine that she had died from a lethal combination of benzedrine and alcohol. The police initially lacked sufficient evidence to press charges against the man who had been with her, and the full, horrifying truth of her final hours would only come to light as part of a much larger, more sinister story that spanned multiple states.
Blanche’s death was not an accident or a suicide; she was a victim of Joseph Dunbar Medley, a suave, career criminal and serial killer. Born in Pittsburgh in 1901, Medley had a long history of run-ins with the law, including a 30-to-60-year sentence in Michigan for armed robbery. He was a man who could exude charm, a trait he used to his deadly advantage.
In November 1944, after gaining the trust of prison officials, Medley escaped and began a violent, cross-country crime spree.
His method was chillingly consistent: he targeted women, often with red hair, to rob them of their valuable possessions. Before arriving in Chicago, Medley had been in New Orleans. There, on December 22, 1944, he drowned 28-year-old Laura Fischer in her bathtub at the De Soto Hotel, stealing her money and jewelry. From there, he made his way to Illinois and checked into the Atlantic Hotel in Chicago, the same hotel where he would cross paths with Blanche Zimmerman.
After killing Blanche and stealing her fur coat and two valuable ruby rings, Medley continued his deadly journey. He traveled to Washington, D.C., using the alias Larry Fischer. On March 5, 1945, he attended a poker party at the apartment of a 50-year-old socialite named Nancy Boyer. After the other guests departed, Medley shot Boyer three times, killing her and making off with her fur coat, an emerald ring, and several hundred dollars.
It was the murder of Nancy Boyer that ultimately led to Medley’s downfall. The evidence in the Washington, D.C., case was the strongest, and authorities apprehended him on March 18, 1945. As investigators delved into his activities, they began to connect the dots between the string of violent robberies and murders of women in different cities. Medley was extradited to the District of Columbia to stand trial for Boyer's murder.
On June 9, 1945, a jury found Joseph Dunbar Medley guilty of first-degree murder and armed robbery. He was sentenced to death. Even while on death row, Medley’s instinct for escape remained. On April 3, 1946, he and another condemned inmate managed to break out of the D.C. jail, using a rope made of bedsheets to scale down from the roof. Their freedom was short-lived; Medley was recaptured just eight hours later.
Joseph Dunbar Medley was executed by electrocution on December 20, 1946. To the very end, he maintained his innocence, his last words a denial of the crimes for which he was condemned. For Blanche Zimmerman, a woman whose life was tragically cut short in a Chicago hotel room, justice was finally served, her case solved not as an isolated incident, but as a crucial piece in the dark and violent puzzle of a serial killer's reign of terror.
