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Isabel Cordle 1988 Ohio Cold Case - NightOwl - 09-03-2013
In Sunday's Toledo Blade I read the story about Isabel Cordle from Sandusky County Ohio, on how she was murdered, it's a very creepy story and the weapon used was a hatchet found leaning against a tree.
1988 cold case reopened for TV crime show
‘Cold Justice’ series to examine Sandusky Co. woman’s slaying
BY JENNIFER FEEHAN
BLADE STAFF WRITER
FREMONT — Sherry Henry can't remember a day that hit her as hard as the 25th anniversary of her mother’s slaying.
Her mother, Isabel Cordle, was found bludgeoned to death on Jan. 24, 1988. “It really affected me,” Ms. Henry said. “The 25th year ruined my day.”
Months later, Ms. Henry was contacted by the Sandusky County Sheriff’s Office.
Authorities let her know they were reopening her mother’s homicide investigation and hoping to crack it with the help of a new television show called Cold Justice.
“I was ecstatic, although it was very emotional,” Ms. Henry said. “This was all I’d ever prayed for for 25 years.”
Cold Justice, which debuts at 10 p.m. Tuesday on TNT, is described as a “real life crime series” that looks at unsolved murders in small towns across the country.
Its segment about the slaying of Isabel Cordle is to air Oct. 15.
“I don’t care who it is, I just want whoever it is to pay the price,” said Ms. Henry, 50, who now lives west of Indianapolis. “Whoever did this obviously does not have a conscience. It was brutal. To walk away from that and go on with your life is unfathomable to me.”
Mrs. Cordle, 49, was beaten over the head with a hatchet as she slept on the couch in the living room of her home along U.S. 20 just west of Bellevue.
She had been out playing Bingo that night. When she returned home, she got her nightgown on, and fell asleep on the couch.
The victim’s husband, Richard Cordle, was sleeping in the couple’s first-floor bedroom.
He called the sheriff’s office after getting up about 6 a.m. and finding his wife.
He told deputies the door to the garage was open and the television was on, but he said neither he nor the couple’s three children heard anything unusual that night.
There were no signs of a break-in, but a bloodied hatchet was found leaning up against a tree in front of the house.
It’s an image that’s stayed with retired Deputy Paul Overmyer, who was one of the first to arrive at the Cordle home.
“The thing that stuck in my mind is here’s a place in the middle of nowhere and somebody puts a hatchet in a woman’s head and takes it out and props it up against a tree,” Mr. Overymyer, 71, said. “If you would’ve shot somebody or stabbed somebody, you probably would’ve driven to a creek or a river and tossed it over the side.”
In the ensuing weeks, deputies canvassed the area for witnesses, sent evidence to a lab to check for fingerprints, searched for the store that sold the hatchet, and interviewed the victim’s husband and children. A grand jury was convened, but no indictments were issued.
“My gut feeling was she knew [her killer] and it was somebody who’d been at the house,” Mr. Overmyer said.
Fast forward 25 years.
The retired deputy’s son, Kyle Overmyer, who was 14 when Mrs. Cordle was killed, is now Sandusky County’s sheriff.
He said he has wanted to reopen the county’s six or so unsolved homicides.
When he got a call from TNT last spring, he agreed to work with producers of the new crime show.
“When you’re dealing with families that have lost loved ones, they want closure,” Sheriff Overmyer said. “I figured what a great way to do that, to try to close up one of these cases or at least attempt to. It would be nice for these families to have an answer.”
Working with a reality TV show meant opening the office’s case files and evidence room to the Cold Justice team and allowing it to film the sheriff, Detective Capt. Sean O’Connell, and Detective Sgt. Zachary Zender over two weeks in June as they interviewed witnesses and those considered potential witnesses.
Most of those they spoke with, including Richard Cordle and Sue Thompson, whom Mr. Cordle married within a year of his wife’s slaying, agreed to on-camera interviews.
The couple now lives in Fort Wayne, Ind.
Detective O’Connell said the Cordles were interviewed twice over the summer — at the Fort Wayne police station and at the Wood County Sheriff’s Office after Mr. Cordle underwent a polygraph exam administered by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation in Bowling Green.
The detective said the hatchet, clothing, and other evidence were submitted to a lab for DNA testing.
A hatchet was found at the murder scene. Isabel Cordle. 49, was killed with a hatchet in her home Jan. 24, 1988. A hatchet was found at the murder scene. Isabel Cordle. 49, was killed with a hatchet in her home Jan. 24, 1988. No one has been charged.
Investigators hope the Cold Justice episode will prompt more witnesses to come forward, perhaps people who worked with Mr. Cordle and Ms. Thompson at the former Van Dresser automotive parts plant in Norwalk in 1988.
Ms. Henry, who was living in nearby Bellevue with her husband and two children when her mother was killed, said she talked with her mom every morning and remembered her as a person who loved to laugh, loved her children and grandchildren. Mrs. Cordle had three grown children from a previous marriage and three children with Mr. Cordle.
The investigation caused rifts between her and some family members, Ms. Henry said.
“I was prepared for that and I’m at peace with that,” Ms. Henry said, explaining that she remains determined to “bring justice to my mother.”
Contact Jennifer Feehan at: [email protected] or 419-213-2134.
Read more at http://www.toledoblade.com/TV-Radio/2013/09/02/1988-cold-case-reopened-for-TV-crime-show.html#mDvOY4zpJLUfQyWF.99
Thanks to the retired Sheriff's son who is now a Sheriff also the cold case is being reopened and will air Tuesday October 15th on a Premier TNT 'Cold Justice" the producer of the show invites others with a cold case to contact them. Here's the link to the new TNT crime show http://www.tntdrama.com/series/cold-justice/
RE: Isabel Cordle 1988 Ohio Cold Case - HairOfTheDog - 09-03-2013
Interesting case, NightOwl.
I've seen the previews for Cold Justice; looking forward to the series.
Kelly Siegler is amazing in the courtroom. I'll never forget her prosecution of lying murderess Susan Wright, who stabbed her husband nearly 200 times after tying him to their bed posts.
Siegler brought a bed and a dummy into the courtroom, straddled the dummy, and stabbed it over and over. Her cross-examination was brutal as well; she called Wright out on every single lie. Wright was found guilty, of course.
And, Yolanda McCLary is a really smart investigator.
Hoping together they'll solve some of the small town cold cases covered in the show, like Isabel's.
RE: Isabel Cordle 1988 Ohio Cold Case - RJs-Ex - 09-03-2013
Anyone else think the husband probably did it?
*Basing my opinion solely on what I've read in this thread.
RE: Isabel Cordle 1988 Ohio Cold Case - NightOwl - 09-03-2013
(09-03-2013, 11:51 AM)HairOfTheDog Wrote: Interesting case, NightOwl.
I've seen the previews for Cold Justice; looking forward to the series.
Kelly Siegler is amazing in the courtroom. I'll never forget her prosecution of lying murderess Susan Wright, who stabbed her husband nearly 200 times after tying him to their bed posts.
Siegler brought a bed and a dummy into the courtroom, straddled the dummy, and stabbed it over and over. Her cross-examination was brutal as well; she called Wright out on every single lie. Wright was found guilty, of course.
And, Yolanda McCLary is a really smart investigator.
Hoping together they'll solve some of the small town cold cases covered in the show, like Isabel's.
Thanks! HairOfTheDog I watched the TNT segment with Susan & Yolanda, I was really impressed with both of these ladies "Justice Warriors".
I don't have TNT network so hope they put the show online to watch.
Hope they both present the killer. I found another article in the Bellvue Gazette Newspaper will add it below.
(09-03-2013, 12:32 PM)RJs-Ex Wrote: Anyone else think the husband probably did it?
*Basing my opinion solely on what I've read in this thread.
It sure looks like him, the Sheriff thinks it was someone in the house. I wondered why is she sleeping on the couch?
Here's the Bellvue Gazette article it's very interesting.
____________________________________________________________
Cold case reopened after 25 years by Sandusky County
The Sandusky County Sheriff’s Office has reopened a 25-year-old Bellevue murder case where a woman was murdered in her home as she slept downstairs on the couch with four other family members also sleeping in the home.
Sheriff’s Detective Sean O’Connell said in 1988 on Jan. 24, Isabella Cordle was murdered with a hatchet which was found outside the entry way to the house at 1350 W. Main St. That house — today a tri-plex — still stands, but all of Cordle’s family have moved from the area.
“We want to throw it out to the public,” O’Connell said about what happened 25-years ago.
Deputies determined that Isabella went to bingo on the Saturday night before her murder in Amherst and she returned home late.
“She sent an 11 and 14 year old up to bed,” the deputy said about the three children in the house. The third child, a 12-year-old boy, was reportedly sleeping with Isabella’s husband, Richard Cordle, upstairs.
“Isabella changed into her pajamas, got something to eat and went into the living room and fell asleep,” he said about the 49-year-old victim. “She was found in a sleeping position.”
After many years and other theories being ruled out, deputies believe she was killed by someone in the home.
Twenty-five years ago the county coroner determined the local woman died between 1 to 2 a.m. Sunday. Deputies stayed on the scene through the night and into the next day, according to reports from The Gazette.
The victim was slain with a blow from a hatchet or “hand-ax”.
In 1988, The Gazette reported: “Cordle told deputies he awoke to the sound of the television and came downstairs in the white, two story-house. According to Mr. Cordle’s statement, he found Mrs. Cordle lying on the couch in her nightclothes and the front door was wide open. “
Since reopening this cold case, O’Connell said deputies have returned to the building that was the Cordle’s home.
The department still has the hatchet and blood from the scene in evidence, he added. With new evidence processes, the sheriff’s department is awaiting scientific reports on what was collected in 1988.
“We suspect the obvious,” O’Connell said Thursday.
The hatchet was a model that was available and sold at Kmart and at a supplier in Norwalk, called P&R Hardware, which is no longer open. That hardware store had a contract with a former Norwalk company called Vandresser – where both Richard Cordle and a woman named Sue Thompson, who later married the widower, worked in 1988, according to the detective.
Cordle and his wife, Sue, now live in Fort Wayne, Ind., according to O’Connell.
The detective is seeking any information about the family, information about Cordle while he worked at Vandresser and an information that has popped up in the past 25 years as to who murdered Isabella Cordle.
http://thebellevuegazette.com/local-news/cold-case-reopened-after-25-years-by-sandusky-county/
![[Image: murder-scene-3.jpg]](http://clydeenterprise.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/murder-scene-3.jpg)
Photo from Clydeenterprise.com
RE: Isabel Cordle 1988 Ohio Cold Case - HairOfTheDog - 10-27-2013
(09-03-2013, 12:32 PM)RJs-Ex Wrote: Anyone else think the husband probably did it?
*Basing my opinion solely on what I've read in this thread.
I had the same opinion from reading the case overview, RJs-Ex.
After watching the episode, I don't know.
Richard Sr. is an alcoholic and not a great guy, but it was such a brutal crime committed with passion; he really didn't seem to harbor that kind of hatred or have much to gain by killing his wife, IMO. Maybe he did it, it just doesn't seem to fit the normal domestic violence murder or murder-for-gain scenarios.
I definitely don't think that Richard Jr. killed his mom. He was kinda pitiful; childhood abuse seems to have taken a big toll on him.
Glad the investigation is open again and hope Isabel's killer is identified; terrible way to die.
--------------------------------------------
NightOwl:
Where you have been? Hope all's well.
I've had a chance to watch 4 episodes of Cold Justice now; really enjoying the show and Kelly and Yolanda (and the older detective / interrogator).
Nothing like CSI fiction or salacious reality shows; down to earth and factual - real cases that may or may not ever be solved and hinging on circumstantial evidence + good old-fashioned detective work + reasoning. Hope it gets renewed for more seasons.