Christe Raber

The Red Slipper Murder

On Friday morning, September 18, 1953 road maintenance worker Carl Gatchell discovered the body of a young woman.  She was dressed in a flannel nightgown and wore red shoes.  The coroner’s report revealed she was nearly three months pregnant.  Her face was so badly beaten that Wyandot County Sheriff Dean McAllister could not even compose a written description to send to other police departments in the area.  By tracing the manufacturer’s identification numbers stamped on the red shoes, the sheriff determined the shoes were purchased in White Plains, New York. The dental records of a girl missing from White Plains were matched with those of the body in Upper Sandusky.  Finally, body’s identity was confirmed as Cynthia Pfeil, age 19, a student at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware.

Immediately a team of investigators, including Sheriff McAllister and Joe Martino, Special Investigator of the Ohio Bureau, descended upon the university campus.  While questioning Cindy’s boyfriend, Roy Schinagle about his girlfriend’s last known whereabouts, he confessed to the slaying.  Schinagle was taken back to Upper Sandusky for questioning.  In a ten page, typed confession Schinagle stated that Cindy came to Delaware to visit him on Thursday, September 17.  He took her to a shack behind the football stadium and left her alone during the day.  Later that night he returned.  When she told him she had been seen by a man walking by the shack, he lost his temper, punched her in the face, and then strangled her.  Schinagle then beat Cindy’s body and face with an iron poker to make the body unidentifiable.  He put her body in his car and drove until he thought he was far enough from campus, dumping her body in a woods four miles north of Upper Sandusky and ½ mile east of state route 53. 

Schinagle was charged with first-degree murder by Wyandot County prosecutor, Harold Roth.  During the trial, several witnesses reported that Cindy occasionally would have bruises on her when she returned from dates with Schinagle.  On one occasion, she returned with a cut lip and blackened eye.

On October 22, 1953, Schinagle was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.  He was paroled in December 1963, after serving only ten years of the life sentence.