Port Deposit Poice Chief Horace Boddy (an undated snapshot provided by Chief Boddy)
Port Deposit Police Chief Horace Boddy passed away on July 21, 2019, at the age of 95. Horace became an auxiliary officer on the Port Deposit force in the early 1960s. About 1966, the council promoted him to the top position. This made him the first African-American police chief in Cecil County once he took charge of the department. Although it was a part-time position, he was on call around the clock.
A Young Man’s Interest in Policing
As a 9 or 10-year-old growing up in town, the dream of becoming a police officer started one day during a snow storm, he recalled in an interview with the News Journal. He and a friend were making their way through the frigid winter blast to a store when a Maryland State Trooper from the Conowingo Post pulled up. The trooper told the pair to jump in, and he gave them a warming ride to their destination. During that ride on a long-ago winter day, the impressed youngster was enchanted by the helpfulness of the officer and “the excitement of the police car, especially its radio.”
After 16 years of service to the municipality, the chief contemplated retirement as the 1980s got underway. Finally, in February 1980, he stepped down as the town’s top lawman, but he wasn’t ready to completely retire.
Stepping Down as Chief
His second in command, 33-year-old Bill Waibel, became the chief, and Mr. Boddy stayed on as a member of the force. He told the News Journal that it was time to “let somebody else handle it. Twenty-four hours a day is pretty rough when you work at a job 16 years, I think that’s enough.” He retired completely from law enforcement in 1983.
It was a job well done. When he announced the decision to step down “mostly due to the increasing demands of the office and the pressing needs for more specialized training, which would best be filled by a full-time Chief, Port Deposit Mayor Donald Post remarked to the News Journal: “Officer Boddy is well-respected and known in the community for his friendly manner and civic pride and this unselfish act is a continued expression of that concern.
He had faithfully served as the Port Deposit Police Chief.
Port Deposit Police Department — The four members of the force posed for a picture as Chief Horace Boddy reminded everyone that “safety is always in season. Part of a calendar from the early to mid-1970s. (L to R) — Officer Cornelius Scott Sr., possibly Carl Ridgley, Chief Boddy, and Officer Edward E. Pierce. (Source Chief Boddy)
For Additional Photos of Chief Boddy and the Port Deposit Police Department, see this album on Facebook.
A SERIES— This is the second part of a series examining the role of the coroner, the lead officer in charge of investigating suspicious deaths for centuries in Maryland. For the first installment about the history of the coroner’s office click this link. This article examines how a murder investigation progressed in one case in 1886.
The murderously battered body of William Green, an old man living on a barge on Back Creek at the edge of Chesapeake City was discovered on March 18, 1886. Incoherent and urgently needing medical attention, people carried the insensible fellow to George Whiteoak’s home in town, where he lingered for a few days.
How Billy the Joker was Killed, Cecil Democrat, Oct. 2, 1887
As news of the grisly assault spread, lawmen hurried to the desolate cabin at the edge of the marsh. First, they came in ones and twos, Town Bailiff Foard and County Constable Carpenter arriving promptly. And when word of the cruel assault traveled to Elkton, Cecil County’s entire criminal justice system, the sheriff, state’s attorney, magistrate, coroner, deputy sheriff, and more constables bolted into action.
The local officers scoured the abandoned canal boat cabin at the edge of Chesapeake City for clues. On the floor, they discovered a stonemason’s hammer covered with blood, and in a trunk the man’s revolver, its chambers fully loaded. Otherwise, the assailants left no trace of their identity, and there were no witnesses.
Working off slender leads, the officers chased down suspects, questioning a local stonemason, interrogating canal boat crews, and rounding up a few wayward types. However, it was fruitless, mystery surrounding the crime as nothing viable developed. Only the incoherent victim knew what happened.
William Green, also know as Billy the Joker, was murdered in the cabin of his abandoned canalboat grounded on the northside of Back Creek at the edge of Chesapeake City (Source: Atlas of Cecil County, 1877)
Green lingered on his death bed until 8 a.m. Sunday, March 21, when officials sent for Coroner Perry Litzenberg. He dashed to Chesapeake City to hold an inquest upon the remains, State’s Attorney William Bratton coming down from Elkton with him.1
Murder Investigation Begins
In the hands of the Cecil County Coroner, the investigation into the violent and untimely death began that afternoon at the Whiteoak house. Chesapeake City Magistrate Christfield rounded up twelve good and lawful men to serve on the coroner’s jury, and Litzenberg swore them in. Upon their oath, the panel swore they would inquire on the part of the State of Maryland when, how, and what manner Green came to his death.
The inquest began when the jurors viewed the body in the dining room. They carefully eyeballed it for marks of violence, taking note of the wounds, before retiring to the parlor to continue the inquest. Some 30 witnesses testified and evidence was exhibited as doctors Bratton, Krasner, and Wallace conducted the postmortem in the next room. After finishing the autopsy, the physicians testified that blood on the brain and a crushed skull, a piece about the size of a quarter pressing into the brain, caused death. His jawbone was also broken, and they were satisfied that the hammer was the instrument that took him down.
Four hours after the inquest started, the jury presented the verdict. Although they were unable to connect anyone with the murder, they swore upon their oath that “William Green came to his death from compression of the brain caused by blows upon the head by a blunt instrument in the hands of persons to the jury unknown.”
This murder ruling triggered a full homicide investigation, all the elements of the county’s criminal justice system sprinting into action to pursue leads while grilling suspected assailants. However, the murder investigation grew cold, the local officers exhausting every avenue as they ran down suspects.
Pinkerton Detectives
Therefore, the Cecil County Commissioners hired the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. One sleuth worked the case around town, spending the entire month of April and part of May combing through tips, leads, and clues while working up suspects. Nevertheless, after a “patient investigation” of weeks, he was unable to make any viable discoveries, so an undercover agent was added to the case. In the dry town of Chesapeake City, this gumshoe started a “pear cider saloon,” covertly listening to the “class of the community who spent their time in drinking and playing cards” for clues.
This approach to criminal investigations was a waste, the Cecil Whig reasoned. “Instead of asking the governor to offer a suitable reward open to competition among professional detectives for the discovery of the criminal,” they hired two private eyes from the Pinkerton National Detective Agency to work up the case with a “vengeance” at the expense of the county. One took it in hand and masqueraded in the role of a detective for quite a time in Chesapeake City, while the other worked as a “blind,” the paper remarked.
Weeks after the “miserable failure in detective work”, one of the participants in the crime confessed his guilt and an arrest of his associates followed. This big break came when Alfred T. Mannon took his son, George, to State’s Attorney Daniel Bratton. There he admitted to being one of the parties involved in murdering the “old Englishman.” He along with Paul Reed came upon a stonemason’s hammer in the road and they carried it to the desolate cabin in quest of whiskey and money, he reported.
Meanwhile, Reed had slipped out of the county and the Pinkerton man collared him near Annapolis. The detective brought him to the jail and put him in the custody of Sheriff Robert Mackey and Deputy Harvey Mackey. Both made confessions implicating each other.
Not one clue, trace, or step in the case was due to the gentleman who “mulcted” the county for the nice little sum of almost $600, doing practically nothing except to aid in defying the law in Chesapeake City and in doing police duty to bring Paul Reed from Annapolis to Elkton, the Cecil Whig noted following Mannon’s confession.2
Murder Trial
Reed waived his right to trial by jury, opting instead for a bench trial, while Mannon put his case in the hands of jurors. Owing to the great interest in the matter, Judges Stump and Thompson ordered Sheriff Mackey to summons “forty talesmen,” as the pool for jury duty.
At 11 p.m. on October 1, 1886, George Mannon, 19, walked out of the courtroom, a free man having been declared not guilty by the jury. As the foreman announced the acquittal, friends of Mannon applauded and shouted vigorously. At the time of the disruption, Judge Robinson made a remark that caused controversy. Some thought he said this verdict was an outrage on all decent people.3,4,5,6
Reed was convicted of murder and sentenced to death, Judge Stump remarking:
A more deliberately planned, premeditated, cold-blooded murder was never perpetrated in this or in another community, than that of which you stand convicted. After numerous consultations with your confederates . . . you twice walked seven miles with the deliberate purpose to murder and rob. . . . . After the second visit George Mannon was your companion. There was no hesitation then. He was possessed of the nerve that was wanting in you and Goffney. I have no doubt that he struck the blow, which deprived William Green of Life. You were present, aiding, abetting, counseling, and robbing. But you are as guilty as he. The conviction of Mannon would have added nothing and his acquittal can subtract nothing from the full measure of your guilt.7
A Wilmington newspaper, the Daily Republican, had this to say about the shocking murder verdict:
Read, it was proved, was an accessory to murder, while Mannon was the real conspirator. But Reed selected to be tried by the court and Judge Robinson adjudged him guilty. Then came Mannon’s trial and availing himself of the same privileges selected to be tried by a jury and that jury, though he was the real murderer, brought in a verdict of not guilty. Reed was an African American and Mannon was white. While there was no doubt of the guilt of Reed, there was, if such a thing could be, less doubt of the guilt of Mannon. But the latter knowing his guilt and knowing that Judge Robinson would not have spared him on account of his color, knew he would be in safe hands of a white jury, and that was his choice. This is a sad commentary on the justice of trials by jury, and if this is the way they work the sooner they are abolished the better. Governor Lloyd, however, will display good sound reason and judgment by never setting a day for Reed’s execution.8
Reed Pardoned
Under the circumstances associated with the verdict, State Senator Clinton McCullough States Attorney Daniel Bratton, and several Elkton lawyers went to Annapolis to present Governor Lloyd a petition “signed by all the officials and most of the prominent citizens of Cecil County” urging a commutation of the Reed sentence. Governor Lloyd commuted the sentence to life in prison.9,10
On De. 24, 1907 Governor Warfield pardoned Reed. He had been in the penitentiary since 1886 for the murder of William Green, also known as “Billy the Joker.”
The Cecil County Trial Docket for Paul Reed, convicted of the murder of William Green
Endnotes
“Death of William Green,” Cecil Democrat, March 27, 1886[↩]
“Something Else to Show,” Cecil Whig, Nov. 5, 1887[↩]
Chief McIntire checks speeders in 1966 with the town’s new radar system.
The Elkton Police Department carefully and meticulously chronicled day-to-day happenings for the rural Maryland law enforcement agency in five-pound ledger books from 1955 to 1993. As patrolman went on and off duty, requests for police aid came in, suspects were arrested, weather conditions changed, or accidents happened, officers filled the pages of these heavy blotters with the details, completing a volume for each passing year.
These valuable records, a significant source of information about social conditions and changing times, municipal government, weather, crime patterns, and individual information, were added to the archives at the Historical Society of Cecil County by the Town of Elkton a few years ago. Spanning five decades, historians, social scientists, and family researchers have a long run of complete data, which can be used to understand the past.
Providing a cops-eye view, the handwritten logs began on August 6, 1955. On that Saturday Officer Harry Minker penned the initial entry in the otherwise blank book noting that it was clear and hot at 8:00 a.m. He scrawled nine additional notations during his watch, but only five involved police calls. A few days later, he penned one saying “call to get mayor coffee.”
The Mayor and Commissioners put a push on to increase the efficiency of its force about this time, and these records are evidence of the focus on better police practices. The “thin blue line,” four full-time and 2 part-time men, crisscrossed the town in a new Ford patrol car, responding to calls from the water plant operator who signaled them on the town’s two-year-old radio system. In a few months, the officers would have their own dedicated police station, replacing the desk and shared telephone they used in the town hall.
At first Elkton police work was by and large routine. Traffic problems, simple assaults, drunkenness, loitering, minor thefts, and a little disorderly conduct made up the bulk of the work, but serious crimes and alarming incidents sometimes jolted the routine. Take November 22, 1963. As a thick Chesapeake Bay fog blanketed the town, the day-man, Officer Jerry Secor, signed on watch at 8:00 a.m. On this Friday, as police work goes, things were quiet as he handled two unremarkable calls. Then, abruptly at 1:30 p.m., everything in this Eastern Shore town and the nation changed for someone, in a careful hand, wrote in the register: “President Kennedy shot and killed in Dallas Texas.” For the remainder of that heartbreaking day, there is something about the unsettling quiet reflected in the activity report as a deep dark, sadness penetrates the town and few calls come in for the remainder of the evening and night.
May 1965 train wreck in west Elkton.
There were others. On December 8, 1963, a commercial airliner crashed just outside town killing 81-people, the blotter notes. On a quiet Sunday in May 1965, as two cruisers prowled the sleeping town, a fire-ball suddenly loomed high up into the sky at the edge of Hollingsworth Manor. A chemical train jumped the tracks and exploded.
When storms threatened the county seat, the force was busy. As Patrolman Alton Crawford took to the streets on December 11, 1960, an early snowstorm was sweeping toward Cecil County. For the next two days, the men in blue noted that heavy snow was falling as they rescued stranded motorists, transported doctors and nurses to the hospital, and eventually began reporting that traffic was tied up and all activity had stopped. At the height of the powerful blast, the night watch noted that the power was off all over town.
In August 1955, hurricanes Connie and Diane charged through the mid-Atlantic unleashing devastating floods. Throughout those wind-swept days the men noted the water was rising, trees were blown down, and significant flooding was occurring. When Officer Edgar Startt signed off as midnight neared on August 12, 1955, he put pen to paper and simply scribbled, “bad night, off duty.”
On the evening of December 1, 1974, burglar alarms across town rang out as a severe thunderstorm blew through, taking out power lines and disrupting electrical service. Then at 11:35 p.m. as Officer Terry Lewis cruised East Main a large tree blew over on the patrol car, trapping the officer and his partner. The fire department extricated the men with the Jaws of Life rescue tools.
Just as the nation struggled to clean up air pollution, the night watch, officers, Hawley and Sharpless, reported that a thick smog from a chemical plant drifted over the town during the predawn hours of December 23, 1965. The visibility plummeted to zero as the two officers prowled the darkness looking for trouble.
November 17, 1993, marked the last time someone wrote a note in the old police logs. The department converted to a computerized system and the journals were discontinued as the agency entered the digital recordkeeping age. The last entry occurred at 11:32 a.m. when officers responded to a domestic disturbance. It was the 8,577 call of the year. That year, the Maryland Uniform Crime Report reported the force of 23 officers investigated 555 serious crimes and made 799 arrests. In 1973, there were 461 serious crimes, 278 arrests, and 12-officers.
As one reads the blotters, books now preserved for researchers, you get a detailed cops-eye-view of what life was like on a particular day in Elkton as you fall swiftly back in time with each receding year. The growth and development of the Elkton Police and the community and changes in the nature of crime and social conditions, all unfold in these pages. Minor disturbances, drunkenness, petty larceny, and domestic trouble made up the bulk of the complaints in the early years, reflecting the nature of crime in a rural community in the 1950s. As that quiet decade gave way to the troubling ‘60s and ‘70s, the volumes start reflecting changes in society, the drug culture, social unrest, and the rapid increase in crime. While most of the time the men recorded routine complaints, there were a few spectacular crimes. During the 1990s, the notations sometimes overflowed the pages because of the number of calls.
New Year Ushers in more UFO sightings in Cecil County (Cecil Whig, Jan. 27, 1971)
Some forty years ago, sightings of unidentified flying objects zooming through the night air or hovering over rural roads kept Cecil County’s police agencies busy fielding many calls about strange, glowing aircraft.
The series of reports started in the late 1960s and continued into the early 1970s as people reported large silent objects with bright lights or flying saucer-like craft darting through the darkness.
One cold January night in 1971, an unsuspecting motorist driving down Old Field Point Road sighted an object without engines, windows, or markings gliding silently above the road ahead of his car. Suddenly the UFO stopped to hover over the road as another object met the first one. As soon the driver got to a telephone, he alerted the Elkton Police Department to the mysterious object floating silently on the southwest side of town. Patrolman Marshall Purner answered the complaint but never located the UFO.
Two years later, a rash of sightings had people abuzz as eyes scanned the night sky for mysterious sights. One of those observers, Rachel Gray of Bay View, called the state police after seeing big, bright yellow and red lights floating erratically through the darkness near Bay View. Troopers unable to explain the strange lights phoned the Andrews Air Force Base, which checked radar but found nothing to explain this sighting.
Eventually, the rash of calls about unidentified flying objects subsided. The police explained most of the UFO calls, finding helicopters, weather balloons, and other logical things as the source of the observations that baffled residents. But still, a few remained unexplained.
Residents spot UFO. (Source: Cecil Democrat; date not provided)
