Essex County Chronicles
A recent phone call from the new owner of a property at 224 Lafayette St. in Salem concerning its history, prompted this look back at a series of high-profile — and still unsolved — murders that occurred on the North Shore between 1932 and 1963.
Two of those killings took place less than 18 months apart in Rockport, a tiny Cape Ann community known more for its picturesque beauty and art than for violent crime.
The first victim was A.F. Oker, described by the late Rockport historian Marshall Swan as being a "well-liked, churchgoing, highly-respected, Finnish-born tailor" who had a shop on Main Street. It was there on May 21, 1932 that Oker's son, getting no response when he knocked on the door, procured a second set of keys and found his father unconscious and bleeding on the floor.
The victim died on the way to the hospital. And while the motive was deemed to be robbery — $17 had been stolen — the perpetrator has never been identified.
The murderer may or may not have been the same person who less than a year and a half later killed another member of Oker's church.
A Ms. Johnson had been robbed and beaten to death in her modest Pigeon Cove dwelling, and her assailant then set the house on fire in an attempt to erase all traces of the crime. While the blaze was extinguished, no evidence was found that provided any clues to the killer's identity.
Another highly-publicized murder took place 17 years later just down the coast in Marblehead.
On the night of Nov. 25, 1950, probably during a blackout caused by a blinding snowstorm, someone gained entry into the Sewell Street home of schoolteacher Beryl Atherton and slit her throat. The grade school teacher, described by a Salem Evening News reporter as a "shy, retiring person who had a limited circle of friends," is believed to have known her killer, as she was dressed in a sweater and a slip when she admitted the perpetrator into her home.
Atherton's terrified dog Esky was found on the second floor hiding under her bed. According to a later newspaper story about the murder, there was talk of letting Esky confront any suspects in the case in the hopes that the canine's reaction would help identify the guilty party.
One bizarre twist to the murder was the cleanliness of the kitchen in which Atherton was murdered. It was believed that the killer scrubbed every area of the room — including the sink and refrigerator, but excluding the floor where her body was found — after the murder, possibly working in the darkness.
Despite the claims of some area residents that they knew the identity of the killer, no one has ever been arrested for the heinous crime.
Thirteen years later, another single North Shore woman was found murdered, this one in the aforementioned Lafayette Street property in Salem. The victim, 53-year-old Evelyn Corbin, was found strangled with a nylon stocking in her apartment shortly after leaving her neighbor's domicile at 10:35 a.m. While Albert DeSalvo, the alleged "Boston Strangler," confessed to Corbin's murder, one Salem police officer had other ideas.
In an article in a 1989 issue of the now-defunct North Shore Life magazine, John Moran, a detective who worked on the case, pointed a finger at a 25-year-old local man with a history of violent crimes who fled the area with his underage girlfriend just a few hours after the killing. The unidentified suspect, whom Moran called a "very dangerous guy," was known to have left a nearby apartment with a handful of doughnuts less than an hour before Corbin was strangled. According to Moran, a doughnut had been found on the fire escape just outside the victim's apartment window.
The suspect was arrested and convicted on charges of abducting a minor and was released from jail in November 1963. Shortly after his return to the general population, he was arrested twice for violent crimes against other area women.
But thanks to DeSalvo's confession, and a lack of hard evidence, Moran's suspect was never charged with Corbin's murder.
¢¢¢
Jim McAllister of Salem writes a weekly column on the region's history. Contact him at jim@nii.net.
