Investigators Refuse to Give Up on Decades Old NY Cold Case
Who Beat and Left 18-year-old Albany Teenager Ruth Ann Whitman to Drown in a Roadside Ditch in Upstate New York in December of 1959
By Shawn R. Dagle
In a water filled ditch alongside Sandy Creek Road in upstate New York a school bus driver noticed a dark overcoat.
Stopping to see who the coat might belong to the driver got out of his empty school bus. There in the water he discovered the lifeless body of 18-year-old Ruth Ann Whitman.
Badly beaten and left for dead, Ruth Ann had been dragged unconscious through the bushes and left in the ditch where she had drowned. Unable to identify her, Ruth Ann’s body lay in a funeral home for eight hours before her fiancé Nelson Paul (who refused to view her body) examined a photograph and told police it was his girlfriend.
It had been hours since Ruth Ann disappeared after stopping at the scene of a fire in Albany not far from her fiance’s apartment.
To this day Ruth Ann’s murder remains one of New York State’s oldest unsolved open cold cases.
Investigators however are not willing to give up hope that one day they might be able to identify her killer.
This summer police exhumed Ruth Ann’s body in the hopes of collecting forensic evidence that could help solve her murder.
The daughter of an Albany metalworker, Ruth Ann was one of ten children. Her grandfather was a caretaker at the Albany Municipal Golf Course.
Prior to her disappearance Ruth Ann’s grandfather had gone to the hospital. He died shortly after her murder unaware of the tragedy that had befallen his granddaughter.
The day Ruth Ann’s body was discovered by the roadside in Colonie, New York her father was celebrating his 62nd birthday.
Friendly, with a great sense of humor, Ruth Ann (who was pregnant) was a frequent visitor to her fiance’s basement apartment which she was helping furnish on Lancaster Avenue at the time of her murder.
On December 7 (the day she was last seen alive) Ruth Ann had been visiting a family friend on Jefferson Street in Albany.
It was an extremely windy night and at about 10:30 p.m. Ruth Ann left her family’s friend’s home and headed to her fiance’s apartment. On the way there she stopped at the scene of a fire down the street. It was the last time she would be seen alive.
The following morning – at approximately 8:20 a.m. – the bus driver discovered Ruth Ann’s lifeless body lying face down in the waterfilled ditch.
Not far from the Albany airport this stretch of Sandy Creek Road was located behind the Sandlewood Park housing development. On one side of the road was a wet, swampy wooded area and open fields on the other. The area she was found was known as a lover’s lane.
At the scene police discovered tire marks from a vehicle that appeared to have sped off from the area.
Ruth Ann had no wallet or handbag and had a deep gash on the back of her head. In her hand were a few strands of hair and minute specks of blood on or beneath her fingernails.
Dressed in a camel hair coat, plaid shirt, toreador pants, bobby socks and gray suede shoes, there was an emerald birth stone ring with yellow gold settings still on Ruth Ann’s left hand and a lipstick container and a slip of paper with a telephone number in her coat pocket.
Near the scene investigators also discovered a soiled woman’s handkerchief and the handle to a bumper jack in the woods 20 feet away from the ditch where she was found. The jack had little to no dirt or dust on it indicating it had not been in the woods very long.
Strangely in Ruth Ann’s pocket police discovered the bottom half of a swimsuit. Black in color they believed the swim suit was three years old.
Police eventually ruled out the bumper jack handle as being used in Ruth Ann’s murder. Investigators at the time said they believed the hair discovered in her hand belonged to Ruth Ann and that the blood was too minute to be identified as human. There was no evidence of robbery nor sexual assault.
Ruth Ann’s fiancé told police that he had returned home from work at the White Tower Restaurant to find his apartment empty. According to press reports he told police he went to the fire scene and didn’t see Ruth there either.
At the time police said they had cleared Ruth Ann’s fiancé of any responsibility in her death. He didn’t own a car and didn’t know how to drive according to police. Investigators also said he was working that night when she disappeared from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. giving him a pretty solid alibi.
Following Ruth' Ann’s murder hundreds of people were questioned by police. One witness came forward to report that he had seen a girl walking along the road where she was found early that morning and a car was following her.
A red and white Mercury sedan or hardtop convertible (1954, 1955 or 1956 model) had been seen in the area of the fire and near the scene where her body had been discovered said police.
Within a month of Ruth Ann’s murder police had their first suspect after a paroled sex offender confessed to murdering a teenager in Whitemarsh Township, Pennsylvania in circumstances eerily similar to Ruth Ann’s murder.
On the afternoon of December 30 a highway department crew driving along Hart’s Lane in Whitemarsh noticed a “flash of green” near the roadside.
There in a waterfilled gully highwaymen found the body of 11th grader Maryann Mitchell – her green pleated dress and green jacket in disarray and the letters T and B and the symbol #101 written across her abdomen in lipstick with a semi-circle and wavy lines emanating outwards.
Maryann’s body had been mutilated and her skull had been crushed. She had wounds to the back of her head as well as scratch marks.
Police eventually arrested paroled sex offender and hotel handyman Elmo Smith who later confessed to the murder.
Smith had a record of “vicious head beatings” of women (a number of them in their homes). Investigators believed that Smith had stolen a 1958, two tone Bel-Air Chevrolet that was used in the crime. Inside the stolen vehicle police found a bloody bumper jack.
Immediately police in New York began to wonder if Smith might be their man. According to the press investigators planned on interviewing him in connection to Ruth Ann’s murder.
Maryann had disappeared late at night from a streetcorner where she was waiting to catch a bus home after going to the movies with friends.
Soon after Smith was identified as a possible suspect, an anonymous woman called the Times Record and claimed that nearly a decade earlier the alleged murderer had lived in upstate New York.
Smith was eventually convicted of murder in Maryann’s case and was executed in the electric chair in 1962. It is unclear whether police were ever able to rule him out as a suspect in Ruth Ann’s murder.
Police have recently said they have not been able to definitively rule out Ruth Ann’s fiancé in her murder.
Less than two years after Ruth Ann was killed her fiancé was found guilty of beating a man to death in Canada according to press reports.
Her fiancé (a Micmac Indian) had been living in Canada on a reservation. He had reportedly used a rifle to beat a man to death in the head.
At the time Ruth Ann’s mother told reporters that her daughter’s fiancé had a “fiery temper” and used to hit Ruth Ann.
Other family members said her fiancé could get very jealous and could get “wild” when drunk according to press reports.
Ruth Ann’s mother however told reporters that she did not believe her fiance was involved in her daughter’s murder.
Decades later investigators would once again interview Ruth Ann’s fiancé. Police would tell reporters this past summer that they believed he was being truthful but said he has never been definitively ruled out as a suspect.
Police have also looked at Robert Garrow – who has been accused of being involved in four murders.
He lived on Ruth Ann’s street at the time of her murder and was allegedly dropped off at the scene of the fire that night.
Recently police have also told reporters they have two persons of interests in Ruth Ann’s case one living in Florida, the other living in Connecticut.
Eventually Ruth Ann’s murder grew cold. The blood and hair taken from her hands were lost by police.
In 2012 the case was reopened after her murder was brought to the police’s attention by a member of her family.
This summer police exhumed her body and took scrapings from beneath her fingernails and impressions of her head injuries in the hopes of determining what may have been used to cause them.
Given major advances in forensics and DNA technology police hope any new evidence collected may lead to identifying her murderer.
-December 19, 2022
SOURCES
The Troy Record “Murder Solution Hope Dim” John J. McNamara December 12, 1959
The Times Record “Was Alive When Thrown In Ditch” December 9, 1959
The Times Record “Boyfriend Cleared After Questioning” Hilda Goodwin December 10, 1959
The Troy Record “Coroner Says Whitman Girl Died at 3 a.m.” December 30, 1959
The Troy Record “Rule Out Jack Weapon Theory in Murder Case” John J. McNamara December 11, 1959
The Times Record “Boyfriend of Slain Area Girl Convicted in Canada Murder” November 17, 1961
Times Union “Were Tracs of Killer Buried with Ruth Whitman” Paul Nelson August 5, 2022
The Troy Record “Murder Solution Hope Dim” John J. McNamara December 12, 1959
The Times Record “Was Alive When Thrown In Ditch” December 9, 1959
The Troy Record “Grandfather of Whitman Girl Dies” December 16, 1959
The Times Record “No New Leads Found in Slaying” December 12, 1959
Times Union “Were Tracs of Killer Buried with Ruth Whitman” Paul Nelson August 5, 2022
The Troy Record “Murder Solution Hope Dim” John J. McNamara December 12, 1959
The Troy Record “Coroner Says Whitman Girl Died at 3 a.m.” December 30, 1959
The Times Record “Philadelphia Slayer to be Quizzed in Colonie Murder” January, 9, 1960
The Times Record Killer Still Denies Part In Girl’s Death” November 25, 1961
The Times Record “Boyfriend of Slain Area Girl Convicted in Canada Murder” November 17, 1961
The Philadelphia Inquirer “Chronology of Brutal Slaying” Leonard J. McAdams January 10, 1960
The Post Star “Pennsylvania Death Warrants Signed” August 3, 1985