JAMESTOWN, North Dakota 鈥� A 1945 murder in North Dakota remains unsolved, with the confession of a known criminal dismissed as fraudulent shortly after the killing.
Margaret Roeszler, 42, was shot on Sept. 19, 1945, as she worked in the Paramount Beauty Shop, which she operated in the Cran Hotel in Jamestown. Roeszler had operated the Paramount for nine years and was a longtime Jamestown and North Dakota resident.
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On this Wednesday afternoon, Roeszler was styling the hair of Mrs. Emil Miller when a man entered the Paramount Beauty Shop.
The man was described as a 鈥渟mall, white man, dressed in brown and tan,鈥� who requested money. He reportedly followed Roeszler into a back room to receive the money. Moments later, a single shot sounded.
Miller took this opportunity and left the Paramount Beauty Shop and called authorities, who found Roeszler wounded but clinging to life. She was transported by ambulance to Trinity Hospital, where she died of a bullet wound to the head in the early hours of Sept. 20, 1945.
Jamestown and Stutsman County law enforcement, aided by firefighters who were already gathered on a call, searched the area immediately after the shooting.
The search and early investigation produced no leads in the crime.
Even without leads or suspects, a coroner鈥檚 inquest was convened. Two people testified that the crime did not seem like an 鈥渙rdinary robbery.鈥�
Miller testified that the assailant said, 鈥淕ive me that money鈥� and Roeszler replied she didn鈥檛 have much but went into the back room to get it.
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The coroner鈥檚 inquest returned a verdict saying Roeszler had died of a 鈥渨ound of her head caused by a bullet fired from a gun by a person unknown and that she came to her death feloniously.鈥�
No arrests have been made in the case to this day.
The week after the killing, what would seem to be an unrelated story ran on the front page of The Jamestown Sun.
John Crockard, of Denver, was arrested in Bismarck and charged with passing fraudulent checks there and in Fargo. A newspaper article listed his criminal history of passing worthless checks in a number of areas around the country.
Crockard told Bismarck authorities he鈥檇 killed a man in a brawl in Canada, although local law enforcement officers said they could find no information on such an incident. Crockard was sentenced to the North Dakota State Penitentiary for up to five years for passing bad checks in Bismarck and Fargo in September 1945.
There was no progress on solving the Roeszler murder for four years.
At Crockard鈥檚 release from the penitentiary in Bismarck, he was transferred to a prison in Michigan, where he faced similar bad check charges.
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There, he confessed to the murder of Margaret Roeszler and a man named James Wood or Woods, with both crimes committed in the Jamestown area in 1945. Both Wood and Woods were used by Crockard in his statements,
Crockard told officials that he and Wood/Woods were narcotics smugglers and that Wood/Woods had developed a relationship with Roeszler in Jamestown. Crockard said he thought the couple would talk about the drug smuggling enterprise and killed them both.
Wood/Woods, who was unknown to law enforcement officers and not listed as missing, was supposedly buried in the bed of a road under construction between Valley City and Jamestown.
Crockard鈥檚 story unraveled quickly. He claimed he met Wood/Woods when they were both held at a Washington state correctional facility in the early 1940s.
The prison system in Washington had no record of a James Wood or Woods.
Crockard also couldn鈥檛 recall details of the Roeszler murder, including the type of gun or the number of times he shot her.
Detectives investigating the confession also noted a recent story featuring fictional detective Dick Tracy had included a killer burying a body in a road bed that was about to be covered with concrete.
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Crockard was not returned to North Dakota to face murder charges and continued his sentence in Michigan. Internet searches for his ultimate fate did not return any information.
The murder of Margaret Roeszler remains unsolved. Her remains were buried in Ashley, North Dakota, where she was born.
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