[NOTE: Those of us who have lived in Fairfax have long heard
rumors and speculation about the disappearance of Johnny Hundley and Jimmy
McQueary. While I acknowledge the potential shortcomings of news reporting, for
this post I have chosen to source primarily contemporaneous newspaper
articles about the boys’ disappearance rather than personal reminiscence and
speculation.]
Johnny Hundley Jimmy McQueary
Fairfax was a great place to grow up with a lot to explore. My
mom and, decades later, my brother liked to play near Little Duck Creek. My
friends and I wandered freely through the village, hunting for pop bottles at
the car wash and cashing them in at one of our local stores, yelling for the
workers at Keebler to toss cookies over the back fence to us, dumpster diving
behind the Dragon Way office buildings, walking to Frisch’s to grab a Big Boy
comic book. I have heard many people who grew up here liken Fairfax to Mayberry
on the Andy Griffith Show.
But in 1964, Fairfax bore little resemblance to Mayberry.
In June, a teenaged Fairfax boy drowned in the Little Miami River and a little
over a month later a woman who lived on Simpson drowned in almost the same
location. In August, a little girl who lived on Lonsdale was killed by a teenager
who lived just a couple of blocks away. And in October two nine-year-old boys
disappeared without a trace.
On Wednesday October 14, 1964, Jimmy McQueary arrived
home around 9:00 p.m. with mud on his shoes. Jimmy, his parents James and
Matilda, and his siblings lived on Wooster Pike in Fairfax, where the Midas
shop currently stands. There was a sewer project on nearby Eleanor Street and
Jimmy had been playing around the construction site. Mr. McQueary told Jimmy to
come home immediately after school on Thursday and stay in the house. The same
day, Mrs. McQueary learned that Jimmy had been at Frisch’s Mainliner restaurant
the previous weekend and left without paying his bill of a little over a
dollar. She gave Jimmy enough money so he could go and pay the bill.
Jimmy was a third grader at Fairfax School and, as his
father instructed, came home immediately after school on Thursday October 15,
1964, walking home with his older sister. He changed his clothes, then went out
to play.
Johnny Hundley was Jimmy’s third grade classmate and the
boys were said to have been inseparable. Johnny lived on Germania Avenue, just
a block from the school. Johnny’s dad Robert “Toby” Hundley had died in April
1963 and his mom Gladys worked to support the family. He had a brother and two
sisters. His elder sister recalled years later that Johnny came home after
school that day, gathered some pop bottles, and walked to the corner store to
cash them in.
Thursday afternoon was pleasant, with fair skies and a temperature
in the mid-70s. After leaving school and stopping at home, Jimmy and Johnny got
together. The story goes that Johnny went to Jimmy’s house and Jimmy slipped
out the back door, despite his dad’s instruction to stay in the house. At 3:45
to 4:00 p.m. that day, the boys were seen at Frisch’s Mainliner by a man who
was in the parking lot with a group of friends, and a little later by a waitress. The boys
told the man in the parking lot that they had found a $20 bill. The man didn’t
see the money and didn’t ask questions about where they found it. The boys
showed the waitress the $20 bill. The waitress said the boys had stopped in to
pay their outstanding bill from the previous weekend.
Around the same time, a schoolmate saw Johnny and Jimmy in
the lot in front of the Colonial Center Building on Dragon Way. This boy lived
near the dead end of Eleanor Street, which could be accessed on foot through
the rear parking lot of the Joseph Ferris House next to the Colonial Center
Building. The boy later reported that he last saw Johnny and Jimmy walking
toward the Strietmann Biscuit Company (subsequently known as Keebler and now as
Kellogg’s). One could walk through the rear parking lot of the Colonial Center
Building to access a back gate to Strietmann where Spring Street dead
ended at Riverview Drive.
Years later in an interview with WCPO News, Johnny’s elder sister recalled that he wasn’t
home when she finished preparing supper at 6:00 p.m. She called her mother at work, who told
her to call around to see if she could locate him. She was unable to find him.
At 8:00 pm., after returning home from work, Mrs. Hundley called Mrs. McQueary
and learned that Jimmy was also missing. Mrs. Hundley called the Fairfax Police
and they put a missing persons report on the teletype at 8:25 p.m. Johnny’s sister
later recalled that police thought the boys had run away. However, both
families disagreed, stating that neither boy had reason to run away. Johnny’s
family said he was very conscientious about being home on time. A friend told
police that one of the boys had asked him to run away several times.
Below is a map (using 2017 satellite imagery) showing locations
relevant to the boys’ disappearance:
In the hours and days that followed, there were a number
of reported sightings of the boys throughout the greater Cincinnati area. Among
the sightings:
- A woman reported seeing the
boys at 5:30 p.m. on the day of the disappearance as she was waiting in front
of the Strietmann offices. Upon further questioning by police, the woman was
unable to identify the boys as Johnny and Jimmy.
- A teenaged Fairfax girl
reported seeing Johnny talking with a group of kids at 6:30 p.m. on Germania Avenue on the day of
the disappearance. She didn’t know Jimmy, so she couldn’t say if he was also
there.
- A B & O Railroad train
inspector told Fairfax Police that he saw two boys playing in the Bond Hill
train yard on Friday morning October 16. He identified one boy, with whom he
spoke, as Jimmy McQueary. He said the other boy stayed in the background.
- A woman called the Hundley home
and reported that on Saturday October 17 she and three other hunters
encountered two boys coming out of the woods near the Beechmont Levee. They asked
the boys how the hunting was there and they answered that they didn’t know
because they didn’t live around there.
- On Saturday evening October 17,
three people reported two little boys playing outside of Lunken Airport and
cleaning up in a restroom.
Apparently, none of these sightings was confirmed and
searches found no sign of Johnny and Jimmy. Unfortunately, some of these
reports were made to police hours or even days after the supposed
sightings.
Meanwhile, Fairfax Police Chief James Finan reported that
police had searched all the likely spots the boys might be and found nothing. He
expressed doubt that the boys were still in Fairfax and said that a
community-wide search wasn’t planned. The Cincinnati Enquirer reported
that on Saturday October 17 only one auxiliary police officer and Mr.
James McQueary were searching for the boys, looking along the Little Miami
River. When asked about Chief Finan’s whereabouts, the officer on duty at the
police station said he didn’t know and “He’s off on Saturday and Sunday.” The
officer on duty also repeated the story that one of the boys had been talking
about running away.
Perhaps the police changed their minds about a search,
because on Sunday October 18, 35 volunteers joined police for a search around
the Little Miami River.
Tips and sightings continued to be reported to police,
but none led to useful information. Authorities were concerned that the boys
may have hopped on a railroad boxcar and left town. Boxcars were searched both
locally and hundreds of miles away. Police searched vacant buildings and
warehouses. A Cincinnati Police helicopter performed an aerial search of
Fairfax. Bulletins about the boys’ disappearance were distributed to hundreds
of police agencies around the country.
On Tuesday October 20, attention was turned to the sewer
trench work that was being done on Eleanor Street when the boys disappeared.
Because the boys had played in the area, there was speculation that they might
have been buried in the trench. A load of gravel had been dumped in the trench
after Johnny and Jimmy disappeared. Part of the trench was re-excavated, but
crews found no trace of the boys.
The following day, Fairfax Police picked up Johnny’s and
Jimmy’s textbooks from Fairfax School and sent them to the FBI to obtain
fingerprints. While at the school, the police officer spoke to around 30 children
to try to get clues to the boys’ disappearance.
On Thursday October 22, police searched the area near
Columbia Parkway and Red Bank Road. On Saturday October 24, Fairfax Police and
two Kentucky river patrolmen searched the Little Miami River from Mariemont to
Fairfax. Chief Finan expressed confidence that the boys weren’t in the river,
but still thought there was a possibility that they had hopped on a railroad
box car and would be found in another part of the country.
On Tuesday October 27, Chief Finan met with
representatives of 13 local police departments to review the case and solicit
ideas. The railyard and boxcar searches were unsuccessful. On November 11,
Jimmy’s parents took and passed a polygraph test.
About a month after Johnny and Jimmy disappeared, there
was a sighting with a supposedly positive identification of the boys. A truck driver from
Batavia, Ohio, who knew about the missing Fairfax boys, stopped into a service
station in Lily, Kentucky. The employees there told him about two boys who came
into the station to get out of the rain and asked if they could spend the night
there. The attendants allowed them to stay because the station was open 24
hours. The boys said they were from Fairfax, Ohio and had left home. They said
they were on their way to Strietmann Biscuit Company and told how they got
cookies from the carloading area. The boys left the next morning, catching a
ride to London, Kentucky with a trucker. The employees identified the boys from
photographs provided by police.
A hopeful Gladys Hundley went to Lily, Kentucky to try to
get more information. Sadly, it was all for naught. The parents of the boys who
spent the night at the service station contacted police. These boys were
teenagers from Loveland, Ohio who left home on November 13 and had since
returned. Chief Finan interviewed the boys and was satisfied that they
were the ones who spent the night in the service station.
In early January 1965, Gladys Hundley tearfully described
to a Cincinnati Enquirer reporter her painful holiday season. She said
she thought about buying Christmas gifts for Johnny, but that doing this would
make life all the more difficult for her family if Johnny were to be found
dead. She said that prayer was all she had left and that she was under a
doctor’s care for nervousness. Mrs. Hundley said that January 13 would be
Johnny’s 10th birthday.
In February 1965, attention again turned to the sewer
trench project on Eleanor Street. Village residents and new Hamilton County
coroner Dr. Frank Cleveland were concerned that not enough of the sewer trench
had been dug up in October. In March, more of the trench was re-excavated. The
digging, some of it done by hand, took four days and nothing was found. One of
the workers involved in the re-excavation said he was working on the trench on
the day the boys went missing and there had been no sign of a cave-in.
Source: Cincinnati Enquirer, March 24, 1965 and March 25, 1965 Mrs. McQueary hoped that the digging would be extended to include a hillside by a culvert that ran east from Spring Street to behind her home on Wooster Pike. In addition, Fairfax councilman John Pfister suggested
that the boys could have been buried in dirt fill near his home on Spring
Street. He said that dirt from the sewer project was being dumped there the day
of the disappearance and that the boys frequently played there. However, after
the second sewer trench re-excavation, no further digging was done in this
area.
In 1967, there appeared to be a break in the case. On
September 14, a 17-year-old Fairfax boy who had recently enlisted in the Marine
Corps and was serving in San Diego, told a minister there that he had killed
Johnny and Jimmy due to a feud he had with the older brother of one of the boys. He said he had a friend with him at the time. The boy said he lured Johnny and Jimmy into the woods by promising them beer.
Once in the woods, he said he stabbed one child and the other ran away. The accomplice caught the second child and then the boy stabbed him also.
After speaking to the boy for two hours, the minister
called the police at the boy’s request. The boy waived extradition and Chief
Finan and a Hamilton County coroner’s office investigator flew to San Diego, took him into custody, and returned to Cincinnati.
There were immediately doubts about the young Marine’s
confession. The minister hinted in a newspaper interview that the confession
might be untrue and that the boy was homesick. He also said that the boy
claimed to have killed the boys “last October,” not in 1964. His parents
explained that a friend with whom their son enlisted had been dismissed from
the Marines a week earlier due to an eye condition. Their son was also not meeting
expectations as a Marine. The boy’s father said that his son didn’t exhibit any
unusual behavior after Johnny’s and Jimmy’s disappearance and didn’t hang around at the time with the boy he named as an accomplice. His parents believed he was
looking for a way to leave the Marine Corps.
The boy told investigators that he buried Johnny and
Jimmy in the woods where he killed them and buried the knife in his backyard.
The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation was called in to help in the search
of the boy’s yard. A search with a metal detector only yielded some unrelated
items. Sections of the backyard were dug up and the knife wasn’t located.
On September 16, 1967, Chief Finan and the Marine returned
to Fairfax. The boy led police to at least six different locations where he
said he buried the children. Years later, Johnny’s elder sister recalled that
her mother Gladys followed along with the search and said how devastated she was
when nothing was found. That day, the young Marine retracted his confession, but
the search for the weapon and the boys’ bodies continued. On September 18,
Chief Finan called on the boy to take a polygraph, but he and his parents
declined on the advice of their attorney.
On September 19, 1967, the alleged accomplice, who had
since moved to Indianapolis, passed a polygraph test. That day, the Marine’s
attorney agreed to let him take a polygraph to relieve some of the harassment
he said the boy’s family was experiencing and because he felt that Fairfax Police were still casting suspicion on him. He took a polygraph on
September 21 and passed. Chief Finan accepted the results and felt they
exonerated the boy. Years later, Chief Finan said Fairfax Police never found
any evidence to link the boy to the disappearance of Johnny and Jimmy.
Through the years, police occasionally received tips
about the boys’ disappearance, but none appeared to be useful. In
recent years, police even pursued a lead to Foxborough, Massachusetts where a
woman alleged that her father, who was originally from the greater Cincinnati
area, had abducted the boys, killed them in his basement, and buried them under
the porch. There was an unproductive search of the property with cadaver dogs. Police
interviewed the man, other family members, and the woman who made the report (who
was being treated for unspecified mental health issues) and determined the
story was untrue.
Johnny Hundley and Jimmy McQueary have become part of
Fairfax folklore, kind of like our own Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Local
news broadcasts feature the story every few years to increase ratings for sweeps season. Social
media loves stories like this and people who have no connection to the boys or
the community offer uninformed and unfair opinions and theories. We must never
forget, though, that the boys are not fictional characters.
I recall an
interview with John Kennedy, Jr. around the time the film “JFK” was released.
The interviewer asked whether he would see the movie and Kennedy responded that
he wouldn’t “because that’s not entertainment to me.” Johnny and Jimmy’s story isn’t
entertainment for those who loved them. Their parents have passed away without
knowing what happened to them. Their disappearance still hurts for those who
were left behind. It is my sincere hope that the boys’ surviving family and
friends find peace.
This is still an open case and there is a Violent Criminal Apprehension Program alert on the FBI website, which can be accessed at https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/vicap/missing-persons/hundley_je_mcquery_ja.pdf/view.
Sources
(Detailed sources available upon request)
Cincinnati Enquirer, various dates, October 17, 1964 to
September 20, 1967
Cincinnati Post, various dates, October 17, 1964 to
January 10, 1978
WCPO.com, June 15, 2017, I-Team Unsolved: What happened
to Johnny Hundley and Jimmy McQueary?
