The Bridge Styx

A “Cry Baby Bridge” is a recurring urban legend throughout the United States. They are bridges that contain tales of the supernatural. Mothers throwing their babies off the side. The ghosts of jumpers who committed suicide pushing along stationary cars, leaving hand prints on your windows. Tales told to local children breed curiosity, and lead to many nights spent, often with the opposite sex, exploring these “haunted” sights. I must admit that I myself was one of these kids. While in high school my friends and I would pack up a car, invite some girls, and try to scare them by taking them to visit the isolated and abandoned bridge off of Egypt Road in Salem Ohio. The Bridge connected the main road to a now defunct service road and was well hidden amongst the trees in the night. We would dare the girls to see how long they could walk along the bridge until they chickened out, the whole time making noises to scare them. On this same bridge however, in 2010, just a week before Halloween, among the empty beer bottles of teen couples, a patrolling police unit discovered something much more sinister than the usual trespasser. He found the body of 60-year-old Ardes Ruth Bauman, engulfed in flames, her minivan parked on the bridge. 

Her immolation lit up the night, and beckoned for life to come towards it. Nearly a year later her death was ruled a homicide by strangulation, thus becoming the first murder in the history of Perry Township. The small police force had very little to go on except for one very strange coincidence. Salem police had responded to the victim’s house just 10 days previous in order to perform a welfare check on her elderly mother that shared her home. The police were alerted to the situation by the victim’s brother, who, upon coming to town from Hawaii to visit his mother, found her to be living in inhumane conditions. The police found the 91 year old starving to death, wasting away in the care of Bauman. The woman was immediately placed in the hospital, and the case was forwarded to the Department of Family Services. Did her negligent care of her mother have anything to do with her eventual murder? Was the fact that she was under investigation somehow related? Six years later the same questions are still being asked. 

Bridges connect roads over rivers that come between them. Little Beaver Creek may seem minuscule to most, a mere tributary of the Ohio River. But to Ardes Bauman the creek was her way home. The River Styx, following Egypt Road.

"There on the filthy waters," "E'en now what next awaits us mayst thou see, If the marsh - gendered fog conceal it not." - Dante’s Inferno Canto VIII

Just a Quick Update of What Im Working On

I am currently in the midst of researching a string of unsolved murders and disappearances in Columbiana County Ohio. I became interested in a lot of these cases while researching the Michael Willams murder (You can find my article on this case titled “A Ditch on Greenwood Rd.” on this blog). The victim advocacy network of Columbiana has a list of unsolved cases ranging from the 1970s to the current date. The people who run it are wonderful and have been constantly updating it for years. I cannot thank them enough for caring and putting their time and effort into giving a voice to the voiceless. Essentially what I want to do is revisit all of the cases in as much detail as possible, visiting the crime scene and using my camera and words to tell their story. Now for a time frame. I will more than likely have at least most of this project completed by June 25th. I am leaving the country for a two month period after that date. I will continue to update the blog while abroad with (hopefully) more interesting content! Thanks for tuning in and i cant wait to start!

Connected

Sarah Boehm and Kathryn Menendez were from different worlds. Although close in age, Sarah being 15 and Kathryn being 17, the girls shared little else. Sarah was from Rochester PA, a small industrial town located 25 miles north of Pittsburgh, while Kathryn was a native of Alliance Ohio. Rochester and Alliance are both railroad towns, once bustling with feverous trade, now reduced to poverty. In terms of Sarah and Kathryn, however, their hometowns provide nothing more than coincidence. Two girls who’s paths mirrored that of their homes, booming in youthfulness only to be cut down in time. Sara went missing in July, Kathryn in August.

Both girls came together in 1994 in the woods outside of Lake Berlin. While the girls shared little in life, they now shared an astonishing amount in death. Both were strangled. Both naked. Both now 800 ft apart. While the status of their home cities was mere coincidence, their resting place was certainly not. The probability of two killers with a penchant for teenage girls choosing the same remote dumping grounds is slim to none. 

It took until the mid 2000s for the FBI to begin looking at the two cases as connected. 

Kayla had a history of running away. Sarah did not. ironically, the one main piece of evidence, deals with the possibility of Sarah being a run away. In 2011 the FBI released a note they had recovered on Sarah’s bed the night of her disappearance. In an envelope covered with the poem

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

It's necessary to leave. It's for the best. Don't try to trace me.

I'm fine. I would like to be very, very fine.

I'm not staying here. I am unhappy here.

I love everyone, believe me, please.

It's not your fault. I would like to survive.

In the first half she is an adventurous, independent girl who is looking for excitement in the big city, who is repeatedly concerned with making sure her family is not worried. In the second she is a depressed abuse victim who is looking to escape an unloving household where she is only seen as a burden. Can these two Sarah’s simultaneously exist in the same moment? Why does Sarah switch so readily between referring to her family with the personal “you” and the impersonal “they”? Like the girls themselves, the note is a unification of two parts that were never meant to be put together.

Sarah’s father went to her grave in the middle of the winter because he couldn’t bear the thought of light not having the ability to shine onto her. But what is snow other than a great unifier. The coldness of snow, the coldness of death. Snow still connects Sarah and Kathryn together, wherever they are, as it does us.  

“Snow lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.” - James Joyce “Dubliners”

A Ditch on Greenwood Rd.

Rogers Ohio is a small town. When arriving a passer through without a keen eye would more than likely miss the signs welcoming visitors and directing them towards the weekend flee market, one that is overflowing with nick knacks and confederate flags (and combinations of the two). Like the rest of rural America Rogers is experiencing a rise in the methamphetamine trade, which thrives in places with small police forces and more land than they know what to do with. Desolate farming communities are prime meth lab real estate. As these once peaceful communities start to become acclimated to death, the stories, like in big cities, merely turn to numbers. No longer is it the romanticized story of In Cold Blood, but instead it is the very real love child of the war on drugs and Escaping Amish. 

Lost in the headlines of a rising death toll are the stories that are not able to be politicized. The cases that are never solved. The stories that have chapters and twists and turns. Stories that cant just be thrown into the “meth epidemic” bin. 

Sometime before 9:30 a.m on August 30, 2005 Michael Williams was murdered. Greenwood Rd. is a long winding road branching off of St. Rt. 7. The sparsely populated and little cared for street follows a small, now dry stream which is buffered by a small embankment. When late at night you are by yourself. The abandoned houses give no comfort or illusion of life. Michael Williams was, like many others, alone on this road, a noticeable light on a road that was not meant to be illuminated. 

At 9:30 a.m his car was found crashed into a tree, calmly leaning into the embankment, motor still running, still shifted into drive, but going nowhere. Michael Willams was found slumped in the drivers seat but as of now was only a passenger. The autopsy revealed that Michael was beaten to death. 

Greenwood Rd. does not take kindly to visitors.

People often claim that life is a road. But they forget that roads really have no end. Concrete does not pay attention to names and street signs. All roads are interconnected. All roads go somewhere. Greenwood Rd. leads to your driveway, my driveway. Greenwood Rd is the street you grew up on, where you played with friends. Greenwood Rd is where someday we will all join Michael Williams.