On a cold December day in 1978, the life of 32-year-old railroad fireman Charles Lee Burton was tragically cut short in a brutal act of violence that was part of a larger, calculated killing spree. On December 30th, Burton was arriving for his shift at the Jackson, Michigan, train station when he was shot twice with 12-gauge deer slugs. His body was later found inside the crew restroom. This violent act was not an isolated incident; it was part of a targeted attack that also claimed the lives of two of his colleagues, conductor William Gulak and brakeman Robert Lee Blake, who were also shot and killed at the same location.
The man behind this horrific crime was Rudy Bladel, a disgruntled former railroad worker who harbored a deep-seated grudge against the railroad company and its employees. Bladel's animosity stemmed from a 1959 merger of freight yards that had negatively impacted his seniority and led to periodic layoffs. This resentment festered for years, eventually culminating in a series of deadly attacks against railroad workers across Michigan and Indiana between 1963 and 1978. Bladel's methods were ruthless, and his victims were often shot with a shotgun, earning him the moniker 'The Railway Sniper.'
In the aftermath of the Jackson murders, law enforcement launched an intensive investigation. The case presented significant challenges due to the elusive nature of the killer. However, investigators were eventually able to connect Bladel to the crime. A crucial piece of evidence was the murder weapon, a shotgun that Bladel had disassembled and hidden under some bushes at Cascade Falls. When the weapon was discovered three months later, ballistics testing confirmed it was the gun used in the murders.
Rudy Bladel was apprehended on March 22, 1979. Following his arrest, he was charged and subsequently convicted for the murders of Charles Lee Burton, William Gulak, and Robert Lee Blake. For his crimes, he received three consecutive life sentences in a Michigan prison. Bladel's reign of terror, which had instilled fear within the railroad community for over a decade, was finally brought to an end. He remained incarcerated until his death from thyroid cancer in 2006.
