William Callahan, a 54-year-old White/Caucasian man, was found murdered in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, on March 18, 1981, alongside 29-year-old Wendy McDade. The two had been shot repeatedly and left in a field in the Chiwaukee Prairie area of Kenosha County. Later accounts describing the crime reported that both victims had been shot three times in the head, giving the killings the appearance of a deliberate, execution-style attack rather than a spontaneous act of violence.
Callahan
had once worked as a Broadway performer before leaving show business and becoming an executive with Arc Electrical Construction Company in New York, a business controlled by the family of his wife, Eleanor Rao. He eventually held a powerful position in the company, overseeing much of its day-to-day business. Years after his death, federal tax-court proceedings documented that Callahan had taken more than $6 million in cash from Arc between 1977 and 1980. His activities were uncovered in September 1980, and he was forced to resign from the company shortly afterward. Within days, he sold property and left New York.
By that period Callahan was involved with Wendy McDade, a former Broadway chorus performer. Although Callahan remained legally married to Eleanor Rao, records associated with his theatrical career indicate that he and McDade went through a marriage ceremony in January 1981. The pair spent time outside the United States before returning and eventually appearing in Chicago in March 1981. Their presence there would become an important part of the murder investigation.
Callahan and McDade were last reported alive on the night of March 17, when they left Chicago's Continental Plaza Hotel. By the following day, they had traveled or been taken roughly north toward the Wisconsin state line. Their bodies were discovered in the Chiwaukee Prairie area of Pleasant Prairie. Exactly what happened between their departure from the Chicago hotel and the discovery of their bodies has never been publicly established.
Investigators had reason to question robbery as the primary motive. Accounts of the investigation reported that an expensive watch valued at approximately $5,000 remained with Callahan, along with about $1,500 in Canadian currency. The presence of those valuables, combined with the manner in which Callahan and McDade were shot, contributed to the belief that the pair may have been specifically targeted rather than killed during an ordinary robbery.
Callahan's financial dealings offered investigators an unusually complicated background to examine. His disappearance from New York followed the discovery of the missing money from Arc Electrical Construction, and subsequent federal litigation described millions of dollars taken from the company. A later federal criminal case involving another Arc executive also alleged that Callahan and others had participated in schemes involving inaccurate tax information and company finances during the years before his death. Callahan was already dead by the time those later proceedings unfolded, so the financial allegations against him were never tested in a criminal trial against him personally.
Published accounts of the homicide investigation indicate that law enforcement at one point examined a New York City attorney and a convicted con artist who had also drawn attention in connection with another murder investigation. Available public accounts do not establish that either person was charged with killing Callahan or McDade, and neither is identified by the Kenosha County Sheriff's Office as the person responsible. Other contemporary reporting raised theories involving Callahan's business and possible organized-crime associations, but those theories never resulted in a publicly announced prosecution.
No arrest, murder charge, trial, or conviction has been reported in connection with the deaths of William Callahan and Wendy McDade. The Kenosha County Sheriff's Office continues to list the double homicide as an unsolved cold case under case number 81-4200. Decades after the pair were found shot in the Pleasant Prairie field, the identity of whoever arranged or carried out the killings, as well as the precise motive behind them, remains unknown.
