Bizarre Belvidere: The mysterious case of Walton Wheeler

By Zach Yakey

IDA PUBLIC LIBRARY/LOCAL HISTORY SPECIALIST

Last month we discussed gruesome events with questionable histories. It seems only fitting that, given the time of year, we take a look at one that was absolutely true.

The focus of this unfortunate tale is a man named Walton Wheeler. He was a farmer during the Depression Era, located about four miles north of Belvidere, off Route 76. Wheeler lived in an unassuming farmhouse with his wife, Florieta, and eight children. Beneath his humble lifestyle though was an impressive nest egg. He owned over 1,000 acres of land in Boone County and at least 500 more acres in Wisconsin. In a good market, the land alone could have been worth over $100,000, over $2 million today.

Wheeler also collected large amounts of passive income from land tenants, stocks, bonds and personal loans. In a time when banks were difficult to trust, Wheeler’s lending venture was quite lucrative, even when he was more generous than his loan shark competitors.

Why Wheeler never seemed to buy much personally though is unclear. It has been suggested that he was afraid of what people might do in such hard times if they knew they could rob someone so wealthy with no neighbors around to hear. At times, Wheeler even thought that people were watching him, and he claimed to hear whistling around his property, as if someone was giving a signal.

Unfortunately for Wheeler, his paranoia was justified. On April 11, 1934, Wheeler’s eldest daughter, Hazel, was out doing chores in the barn. She heard a car pull up to the house and saw a black sedan she did not recognize. Four men got out of the car, their faces obstructed by scarves.

Wheeler came out when they called him, probably expecting a shouting match with an angry tenant, but instead of harsh words Wheeler was met with a club to the head. He fell to the ground, and the men continued to beat him. Hazel and Florieta rushed to help him, but they were quickly ushered inside at the end of a shotgun.

After Wheeler managed to crawl toward the front porch, the three remaining men opened fire, and then all four quickly made their getaway. Florieta tried to take him inside to be comfortable, but nothing could be done for him.

At the time, this story was a big deal. Papers across the country reported the incident not only for its spontaneity and brutality but for the mystery behind the incident. People in big cities, and even here, found it strange that anyone could have a motive for such a viscous attack against someone they assumed was a simple farmer.

As police investigated the incident though, the public was surprised to learn that Wheeler had an abundance of potential enemies. During such hard times, not everyone was able to pay their debts to Wheeler. Perhaps the most drastic example of this was his 500 acre property in Wisconsin, all of which came from a foreclosure on one of his debtors.

The Illinois State Bureau of investigation quickly took over the case and narrowed down the suspect list. Not long before the murder, Charles Marshal, a Rockford restaurateur known as “Chicken Charley” was sued by Wheeler for a loan Charley had co-signed. The contract Wheeler produced was for $3,000, but Charley claimed to have only co-signed for $300. He went on to claim in court that Wheeler had tampered with the contract to claim more money.

Charley himself could not have been the murderer as he was sick at home for over a month. At first glance, this was an airtight alibi, but investigators suspected it was a little too convenient after extending their investigation outside of Belvidere.

Just 15 hours before the murder of Walton Wheeler took place, four men escaped from a prison in Rock Island. They stole a car, which was found abandoned near Mauston, Wisconsin. This evidence alone might seem more like trying to pin a scapegoat than solving a crime, but the investigators had their reasons for following this lead. It turns out one of these escaped inmates was the brother of Chicken Charley.

All the pieces seemed to add up. Charley wanted Wheeler dead as revenge for the lawsuit so he hired his brother to kill him. Then, he faked an extended illness as an alibi. If this were an episode of “CSI Belvidere,” that would be the ending, but unfortunately Charley really was sick and nothing came out of questioning his brother. Their biggest lead was gone, but the investigators still had alternatives.

In a prior “Bizarre Belvidere,” we discussed how prohibition and the Depression influenced organized bootlegging in Belvidere, but the economic crisis led to another tradition mob racket, loan sharking. Belvidere was actually better off than some areas as far as banks were concerned. The Farmer’s State Bank remained open despite operating at a loss for an extended time.

However, public trust in banks was still low. Many chose to look elsewhere. In Rockford, mobsters had already taken advantage of this situation and were making a fortune. Wheeler was one of the biggest independent lenders in Boone County, and some suspected that his death was motivated by friction with mobsters looking to expand their enterprise.

These suspicions only increased after an extortion note appeared in the mailbox of another farmer less than a mile from the Wheeler farm. Police tried to set a trap for the extortionists, but no one ever showed up to take the bait. Investigators suspected Angelo Buscemi, a known extortionist, of being involved with either incident, but after questioning him while he was under investigation for a separate murder, authorities found no evidence he was connected to Wheeler.

After their mob leads dried up, police reported that, moving forward, they would assume the incident was a robbery gone wrong and not a revenge plot.

From the public’s perspective, the Wheeler case was a string of dead-end leads that could only be explained by more and more conspiratorial explanations – the apex of which being that Tony Musso, a mafia kingpin in Rockford, had him killed and paid off the sheriff’s department and Rockford police to make sure they stopped probing into mob activities.

It has also been suggested that Musso’s connection to Al Capone allowed him to throw off the state investigators. While a thrilling idea, none of this was ever substantiated.

Each bad lead led to a worse lead until eventually the case grew cold. Whoever killed Walton Wheeler got away with it. To this day, they have never been caught. Thankfully, this incident is 80 years old. No need to worry about them prowling about while you trick or treat. So, if you haven’t started already, go out and enjoy all the festivities around town.