Speaker 1: This is a true story. All names have been changed.
Place names and dates remain factual. The place main roads,
the state highways, and large county roads make little concession
to the Northern Indiana Prairie. They zip north, south or
east west across the sun's sparkle land. On smaller local roads,
you feel the contour of the terrain, the gentle swell
and dip passed innumerable kettle lakes, the drainage ditches, and
the creeks that veane this country. You smell the lush,
loamy soil, but above all the ever changing sky. This
is a rich country, and people have lived here for
thousands of years. At a creek rock bar, you may
be surprised how easy it is to find Indian arrowheads
and pieces of pottery. The archaic and woodland people settled
here after the last glacier retreated fifteen thousand years ago.
Glacial melts left behind moraines lakes and the lazy, meandering
Kankakee River basin with its chaotic half millionacre wet woodland
known as the Great Kankakee Marsh. Around the time of Christ,
the Miami and the Pottawatamie Indians settled this area, The
Manitau protected their dark forests at night. The spirits of
men hunted, the spirits of animals. The myeline demons dwelt
under the earth. The first white men here were French
voyagers in tent on fur harvest. They left behind only
place names like Lacrosse, Laporte, and Lapaze. Later, real settlers,
American and Sidebusters began the epic transformation of the Midwest
wilderness into the agricultural heartland of the continent. The Pottawatomie
were driven out in the eighteen thirties. The Grand Marsh
resisted the plow for hundreds of years, too wet to cultivate,
too thick to navigate, the marsh and the woodlands saying
with life. This was the largest inland wetland in North America.
It was a paradise for waterfowl and hunting flourished. Early
railroads lay down short sidings. As hoosier guides pulled gentlemen
hunters from Chicago into the swamp. A barrel anchored in
the marsh grass allowed them to wait snug for the waterfowl.
At the end of the day's shooting, the sportsman could
repair to the luxury of the railcar sleeper, and so
the slaughter began, shot away the deer and drove away
the last of the eastern bison. Trappers cleaned out the beaver, mink,
Martin and other fur bearers. Chains accelerated in the eighteen eighties,
when flat bottomed steamed dredges bowled in and their iron
jaws gnawed away at the Kankakee Wetlands. The Grand Marsh,
once so vast, was reduced to some pitiful holdings and
the land lay stripped. Now farmers could begin cultivating fields
of corn and soybeans. A mint thrived in the rich
monkey soil, and on monkey summer nights, the aroma drowned
the land. These families built America, and food prices plummeted
with the bounty grown in the Midwest. Eden Corn and
port from Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois fed America. Little towns
thrived built around the railroads and grain elevation. It was
a good time, although a hard one. Getting your back
into the work was an accepted part of life, and
while the mechanization enabled the farms to grow, farm work
was never done. It follows a seasonal rhythm of tillage,
planting and harvest, and in winter there were animals to
tend to and equipment to repair. The man Russell Schaeffer
was born here in nineteen oh one, sky ane of
the region's old farm families. It was a big outfit,
and Schaeffer was a respected man in this community. While
he was known as Russ to most, his family and
close friends called him Boots. He was nicknamed as a
toddler when he would climb into his daddy's waiters and
clump about the farmyard. The Shaeffer family had been on
this land for generations and were known, like their journ
and forebearers, for self reliance, thrift, decency, and common sense.
Russe's grandfather, Erwin Schaeffer, had built the immense Bank barn
in eighteen eighty. Russell's father Ivan had taken over after
his grandfather was gone, and now with his passing, the
farm belonged to Russ. Family was everything to the Shaffers,
and Russ planned that one day his son Rob would
take over for him. He and Jesse were thankful their girls,
Kim and Marylyn, had married local men and their grandkids
were close. He kept a brown pony called Dot for
them to ride Saturday August twenty seven, nineteen sixty. Saturday
dawned clear and cool. It was a golden late August day.
Labor Day would be the following weekend, and Jesse Shaeffer
drove the pickup truck to Baths Lake to take her
widowed sister some blueberries and sweet corn. Alice Bock traded
with Jesse for garden greens, tomatoes, and peppers. They talked
about children and grandchildren, and on her drive back home,
Jesse gasped up at Coffin's Corner Market outside Knox and
bought two salt blocks. A boy loaded them into the
pickup truck's bed. Russell Shaeffer spent the morning repairing a
power take off unit and then repairing a drawbar and
caring for his animals. It was a clear, warm day
and he was looking forward to sitting in the shade
with a tall glass of lemonade before supper. Early that evening,
Jesse Shaeffer called her husband into their meal of chicken,
mashed potatoes with gravy and green beans. There was coffee
in freshly baked blueberry pie for dessert. Shaeffer finished his
pie and ice cream. He swigged the last bit of
his coffee, folded his napkin and pushed himself away from
the table. It was dusk and the cool of the
day had descended. It was a good time to be alive.
He told Jesse that he was going to take the
salt out to the Black Angus cattle herd. He would
be back in time to help her wash dishes. Shaeffer
walked out to the truck parked under the trees and
held the door as his dog, Tarzan jumped in. He
drove away from the house and he was never seen again.
The search. The Star County Sheriff Department logged a call
from a distraught Rob Shaeffer at eleven fifteen that night.
Shaeffer reported finding his father's truck abandoned and was unable
to locate his father on their large farm. His mother
was frantic and insisted he call dispatched. Erected the deputy
to the scene, and then radio the senior deputy, who
having just broken up a dust up at a dance
at English Lake, had monitored the radio traffic and assigned
himself to assist on his drive out to the Shaeffer farm.
Deputy Sheriff William Rudd mentally cataloged what he recalled of
Russell's Schaeffer. He was a church goer, probably in his
late fifties, married with two no three adult children. Shaefer
was of average height five foot ten. He guessed he
was heavy set, not a smoker, probably not much of
a drinker, aside from an occasional beer at the American
Legion or the VFW. Most of these farmers were like that.
Did he wear glasses? Rudd thought so. Shaeffer seemed like
any other prosperous local farmer, plane modest, perhaps even gruff,
ruthful and honest, not the impulsive type. You do what
you can, and you bear what you must. A needle
in a stack of needles. Schaeffer was renowned, if renowned
was the right word for it around here, for having
bought a new nineteen forty seven Indian motorcycle. People said
it was the only foolish thing the man had ever done.
Some might dismiss Bill Rudd as a Stark County hill rat,
but that would be a mistake. Rudd had a keen,
inquiring mind. He was a veteran of the fierce world
of death. He had served in a signal unit of
the forty fifth Infantry Division during World War II, all
the way from the landing at Salerno in Italy to
Anzio beachhead, and then the invasion in southern France. Finally,
the forty fifth had clawed its way into Germany and
liberated Docowl Concentration Camp. Rudd had seen and done things
no man should have to see or do. He had
seen every variety of horror and human frailty. As a
deputy sheriff, he dealt with more mundane matters petty theft, drunks,
fighting at a crossroad, tavern, normal ruckuses. The deaths he
dealt with now were car crashes and drownings and farm accidents.
Murder in Stark Counting was rare. From time to time,
one cheating spouse shot the other, but disappearances like this
were exceedingly rare. Rudd was, in fact a shrewd judge
of character and a diligent deputy sheriff. It was a
well known fact if unsaid, that Rudd ran the county
law department while Sheriff boom Miller cruised toward retirement. Rudd
was accustomed to being underestimated, and he used that to
his advance as deputy sheriff. Now at midnight, he was
speeding to the Schafer form on County Road eight hundred West.
No one called it eight hundred west to the locals,
it was Shaefer Road. Rudd pulled into the long drive
that bisected a field of wax beans. A mounted light
fixture provided illumination. On his left was the Shaefer home,
a handsome prairie dwelling. Somewhere inside a dog was barking.
On his right was an old bank barn, probably built
in the last century. Next To it was a modern
pole structure with an attached machine shed with a large
open lot sheltering an alice chambers tractor. Behind that a
stand of walnut trees, and in front of that a
disused corn crib and freshly whitewashed henhouse. Another open lot
held a station wagon, and behind that grew a tangle
of trees. He was on a dark farm track, passing
a cattle enclosure, and Rudd could just see the angus
cattle bunched up defensively. Near the barn and the head
were towering fields of corn. He concentrated on the rutted track.
He had never been on this property before, though he
had flown over it and had a fairly good idea
of the layout. Dry weeds swished and crackled under the
vehicle's weight. In the distance, Rudd could make out a
sputtering red road flare, and he headed toward it. At
the end of the path, he pulled up and found
Deputy Richard Young. He opened his cruiser door. Bill Young said,
rich what have you got? He could see Young's cruiser
parked a short distance away, and near it a pickup truck.
We got Russell's Schaefer, Young answered flatly. Wife said, as
he left the house at dust check his cattle and
didn't return, she called the sun. Who found this Young
motion toward the truck. Okay, Rudd answered, let's start with that.
They walked over to the truck. Is Rod Shaeffer here,
Young motion toward the dark west. He's down there in
the creek looking for his dad. Moonlight bathed the landscape
and an unnatural cold brilliance. It was very quiet, oddly still,
thought Rudd. August's crushing insect drone was strangely silent. They
approached Shaeffer's forward truck, parked up hill from the creek.
The driver door was open and Rudd leaned in with
his flashlight, and the key was in the ignition the
state registration strapped to the sun visor. He could make
out a Remington eight seventy in the small space behind
the bench seat. On the floorboard. Next to the shotgun
was an unopened of buckshot. Rudd duck back out of
the truck. In the weeds, just below the truck's rocker
panel lay a dented flashlight in the silvery moonlight. Its
plastic lens cover shone like an open eye. There was
a muted air of menace about the whole scene. Rudd, Young,
and the shaffer boy moved out and apart and began
their search. Deputies. Rudd and Young swung their county issued
nine volt flashlights slowly from side to side. They called
out for shaffer Rob Shaefer carried a battered Coleman lantern. Dad,
he implored Dad. The lantern soon dimmed and then died.
In his haste, Rob had forgotten to fuel it. He
was frustrated. Somewhere in the dark to the northwest, an
owl called the Quiet Wind brought a whiff of something
tangy and fowl. The search party of three patrolled north
east and then south until they ran up against the
weed choked creek bank. They found nothing. The dark land
was too vast and the searchers too few. Rudd turned
to Young, any helpful thoughts here? Rich Young shook his head.
In the night, it was too dark to find anything. Moreover,
they were trampling the scene. Rudd, as a senior deputy,
decided to wait for dawn and a larger search party.
They were accomplishing nothing here. There was a heaviness about
the air. It was cold now. Young zipped his jacket tighter.
Rudd felt an uneasy tingle of being watched. You could
see everything in the moonlight, and yet you could see nothing,
And he turned to Young. You ready to get out
of here? Rudd asked Young to stay on the scene.
Young was accustomed to that. It was standing operating per Seed.
He lit a cigarette as he watched Rudd's the cruiser
pull away. The next morning, Sheriff Miller, Deputy Rudd, and
the county Search and rescue volunteers returned shortly after first
light to begin a systematic canvas of the area. For
a Sunday morning. It was a respectable turnout. Seventeen men
tumbled out of their four vehicles, some laughing, some grim,
some stubbing out the last cigarettes Before beginning their search.
Miller handed Young breakfast in a bag with a plastic
cup of coffee, and Rudd handed Young a roll of
toilet paper. Young, grin, Now you're too late with that,
he said to himself. Rudd decided that Schaeffer had had
a stroke or a heart attack. Confused and disoriented, he
had staggered off. He would be found in an adjacent
field or the nearby creek, and he might still be alive.
Miller glumly agreed with his deputy, though neither wanted to
say so to a heart racked to Jesse Schaeffer. Miller
addressed the search and rescue volunteers and told them the
purpose of the search, and then Rudd split them up
into teams and assigned search quadrants. They found out. It
was a long morning wading through the cornfields and searching
by the creek, and by noon the sun was hot.
Search and rescue had turned up nothing. After a fast lunch,
the search area was extended to the opposite side of
the creek. An hour into the expanded search, Blaine Smith
yelled uphill from the creek. He'd found a pair of
broken steel framed glasses. Rob Shaeffer confirmed they belonged to
his father, but nothing else was found. It was puzzling, frustrating.
Rudd thought, sick, people, injured, people don't go uphill. It
just doesn't happen, and Rudd now doubted this was a
medical emergency. The search continued, and, buoyed by finding the glasses,
optimism flared that Schaeffer would be found, but that didn't happen.
All the rest of that day, nothing more was found.
Search and rescues scoured for another day, still nothing. Rudd
shrugged it off and arranged for Boy Scout Troop one
eighty six to join the search. It was as if
Shaeffer had vanished into a thin mist, and by now
the Shaffer case was local and state news. Volunteers made
sporadic searches. A week went by, and then another, and
then a month passed, and the search was suspended. Hope
faded and finally died. Thea became a curiosity, and then
it was forgotten. It was now the second week of October.
It's one hell of a thing, Bill, I've never had
a stone cold. Who'd done it? Boom Miller sat across
the office desk from Rudd. Miller had been Stark County
sheriff for nineteen years. Though he had been a county
lawman for many more, he had never had a missing
person case like this before. From time to time, teen
runaways might take off for a romp in Chicago. It
was rare, but they always returned to shocked and disapproving parents.
Miller told Rudd he could recall only one similar case
in Laporte County during the war. A timber cruiser had
been working north and west of Five Lakes and had
utterly vanished. Miller didn't know if that case had ever
been cleared. No, he told Rudd, they never found the guy.
There's big woods up there, well, there used to be.
He and his brother ran a sawmill house was the name,
the lumberyards, still in the family. They dismissed the notion
that Shaeffer had been kidnapped. The circumstances didn't fit. Moreover,
there had been no ransom contact. The Shaeffer was not
the type to just take off. Miller quietly snorted, No,
he wouldn't do that. It's not like we made a
hash of this. We've just got no way forward. Bill.
With the investigation at a standstill, it was time to
inform the family that the official investigation had ended. Rudd
volunteered to do that. He met Rob Shaeffer for breakfast
at Sissy's cavet in downtown Knox. Rob Shaeffer took the news. Well,
it was what he expected. There's just a few things,
Rob Brudd said, Did your dad always carry a gun
in his truck? Now that's unusual for him. Rob siptis coffee.
But things have been happening that kind of spooked him.
Rudd raised a quizzical eyebrow. Well, it was little things.
Someone broke into the barn a couple of times. Dad
didn't like that. At first we thought it was just kids.
He put up a locking barn, a yell lock on it.
That gut broke, tools came up missing, and stuff moved.
The cattle were acting weird and other stuff. It wasn't
just us. Talked to Bud Kridler. He had some things
going on as well. Anyway, Dad began taking precautions. What
about the dog, Rudd said, Tarzan, that dog accompanied Dad everywhere.
That's what really scared my mother. She knew Dad had
taken him along so when he ran up on the porch,
she knew something was wrong. That dog never begged to
be let in, never Betty the house dog. She was
barking like crazy Tarzan. Why'd you call him that? Rudd asked.
Shaeffer sighed, he had a funny bark when he was
a pup. My sister Kim called him that. Rudd and
Shaeffer talked for a while, and soon Bill Rudd was
called to break up a dispute over a property line,
and Rob Shaeffer sat alone in the diner staring out
the window oblivion. How does a man disappear into oblivion?
How can he leave his supper table, drive a short
distance in sight of the home he just left and
simply disappear? Shaeffer saw or heard something? It was dusk
and the August light was failing. What did he see?
What did he hear? The man drives half a mile
down to beat up farm track. He knows his path
and the land surrounding it as well as he knows
every pore in his wife's high cheek bone and her clean,
sweet lips. This stoic has lived on this land longer
than he has been married to his wife. In this
land of grace? How is it that Russell Schaeffer faced
only retribution? How is it that he stepped into oblivion?
After math? The Russell Shaeffer case never cleared. Nothing more
was found. For a few years, people remarked on it,
and then, as is the way of all things, it
was forgotten. It became a slim file in a three
drawer cabinet. Once or twice someone would pull the file
out and read through it. With nothing to add, it
was put back boom. Miller hung on and remained county
sheriff until nineteen seventy two. Bill Rudd got tired of waiting,
got tired of police work, and got tired of a
community where everyone knew everyone else's business. He began night
courses at the local college and got his law degree,
specializing in criminal law. He was hired by a legal
firm in South ben There's always good work for a
good criminal attorney in South ben. Later he was recruited
by a larger firm in Indianapolis and practiced there until
he retired. In nineteen ninety eight. He and his wife,
Doris moved to Panama City, Florida. I interviewed him there
a few years before he passed away in two thousand
and sixteen, Rudd remembered the Schaeffer case. It was a
strange one. We never uncovered anything on that case, he said.
We never cleared it. We never came close to clearing it.
I always hoped that someday a body would be found,
least something, and if that didn't solve the mystery, at
least it would provide some solace and some comfort to
that family people around there. I just don't disappear like that,
you know. The Shaeffer place fell apart after Russell disappeared.
The son couldn't run it and they eventually sold out
to con Agra. The fine house and all the outbuildings
are gone. It's like the way of life disappeared with Shaeffer,
which run as a factory farm. Now, Rudd paused, you know,
we've seen things, Doris and I. We've been places. Our
son met and married a Peruvian girl he met at Purdue.
His father in law convinced Paul to move down there
and do an inventory control on his fishing business in Lima.
It's quite a wealthy family. We visit Paul, Marina and
our grandchildren down there. It's a beautiful country, wonderful food,
Lima Kalo and Machu Picchu. I've talked to the Peruvians.
We've met. Some of them are Amazon people. I told
him about the Shaefer case and they told me they
have similar disappearances down there in the jungle. They blame
it on sorcerers or even monsters. Some of them say,
maybe the land took your man. Bill Rudd chuckled. Most
of them have a lot of Indian bloods, you know.
They believe in some powerful jujuw in Peru, there's still
a lot of belief in magic and the supernatural. Rudd
paused again, I don't know. Maybe it's as good an
answer as any. This story was written for Blanche, Bernice
and Alice. The author is Gerald Gustuffson. Written in August
twenty twenty one.