We briefly touched on the story of Margaret Roeszler last week, a woman of 42 years old who was shot dead in her Jamestown beauty salon on Sept. 19 1945.
Roeszler, whose body is buried in the Lutheran Cemetery in Ashley, was known as a good neighbor, someone who would always help out a friend or neighbor and who was just trying to make a living like everyone else.
Roeszler went to work that day. It was just like any other day. The Paramount Beauty Shop, which she owned and operated, was located in the Cran Hotel at 302 2nd Ave. NE, less than a block from where a 1991 unsolved murder took place. The Cran was demolished in the 1970s.
As she was styling a woman’s hair, an unknown assailant entered the beauty shop, gunned her down and fled the scene. Reports from the time don’t indicate if the man was wearing a mask or not, but nonetheless wasn’t identified.
Less than a year later, a $1,000 reward was posted for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the murderer. That reward, in today’s dollars adjusted for inflation, would be just short of $18,000.
Several years later, a man named John Crockard, a native of Denver who was serving time in a Michigan prison, confessed to killing Roeszler and another man named James Woods. As it turned out, Woods was Crockard’s partner in crime.
It was also learned that Woods had gotten “friendly” with Roeszler, who apparently was Crockard’s girlfriend, according to Crockard.
As this case unfolded, law enforcement found out there was a lot more involved than two homicides. When he confessed, Crockard said he and Woods were running drugs into North Dakota from Canada. They had robbed a bank in an undisclosed location and Crockard was also forging checks.
Crockard told Michigan authorities the whole situation had put him on edge and he didn’t know what to do about Roeszler, who knew too much.
“Jimmie told her everything about the bank robbery and the narcotics and how hot we were in business,” Crockard was quoted as saying. “Her idea was to straighten us both up.”
Crockard went into the beauty shop to confront her. He went into a restroom and “shot up” while trying to decide what to do. When he came out, he told her he planned to take her with him and Woods, but became mixed up and shot and killed her.
Crockard said he was too high on narcotics to remember her name or whether he used his own gun or one owned by Woods, or how many shots were fired.
As Crockard and Woods left town traveling east, Crockard gave Woods a sedative that knocked him out and as darkness approached, Crockard stabbed Woods and killed him. That murder had previously been unknown to law enforcement.
And just like in reading a Dick Tracy story, he found a road construction site that was about to be paved, so he buried Woods and the weapons in a shallow depression in the roadbed.
Later, while staying in a hotel in Fargo, he overheard some people talking about the death of Roeszler. He then sold his car, picked a name out of the phone book and started forging checks. He then traveled to Bismarck where he was caught and later served 18 months in Fargo for the checks he bounced there.
He was then extradited to Michigan for an unknown reason.
Crockard said he found the Lord in 1949 and had to get it this off his chest. And after Stutsman County authorities interviewed him, they suspected he made it all up based on a Dick Tracy story.
An April 23, 1952 article in the Marquette, Mich., newspaper the Mining Journal, reported that Crockard and numerous other inmates in a Jackson, Mich., prison were involved in a mutiny in which nine prison guards were taken hostage. Crockard became a spokesman for the prisoners during the standoff.
