The following stories were published from Nov. 17, 2006, to March 2007

TALE OF A SUSPECT

By Jennie Jones Giles
Thin, emaciated, with a white beard, he wore a gold watch that appeared to be an heirloom. He sat up in bed in a dingy, dark, paper-strewn room in an Indianapolis nursing home, his clothing in disarray.
“Help me, please help me,” he said. “I’m in a lot of pain and I need my medication.”
Despite his pain, 80-year-old chiropractor Paul Saxmann was eager to have visitors.
“I don’t want to miss you,” Saxmann said. “I’m so excited to have visitors from Hendersonville.”
In October, Saxmann clearly remembered his hometown, where he grew up next door on Maple Street to murder victim Vernon Shipman. He fondly remembered roaming the woods near Jump-Off Rock.
The owner of the Tempo Music Shop on Main Street and employee with the N.C. Employment Service, Vernon Shipman, 43, and store manager Charles Glass, 36, along with a woman, Louise Davis Shumate of Asheville, were brutally murdered July 17, 1966. Their bodies were found July 22, 1966, in a crude semi-circle in a grassy clearing in the woods off North Lake Summit Road.
Each victim suffered brutal blows to their heads. Some clues touched off rumors about voodoo and Klan involvement.
The victims were an interesting trio. Glass was a flamboyant showman, music lover and connoisseur of all things Oriental – and also a self-styled expert in voodoo. Shipman was a neat, meticulous gentleman who enjoyed cooking and loved music. Shumate was a woman who appears to have led a double life and who was a mystery, even to her family.
“He (Vernon Shipman) taught me a lot of things,” Saxmann said. “It really hurt me when he got killed.”
Saxmann counted himself a good friend of Shipman’s. Glass he didn’t care for, he said, and Shumate he didn’t know at all. Among the suspects named by the law enforcement agencies who have investigated the case, Saxmann is the only one still living.

Early years

Saxmann’s Disabled American Veteran cap was nearby the bed. A photograph of him taken in the 1950s was displayed in a frame on a bedside table. Another photo was of his father, who was also a chiropractor, and his grandfather.
Saxmann was born in Hendersonville in June 1926, within a month after his parents, George and Ella Esther Evans Saxmann, bought the house next door to the Shipmans.
“I’ve been away from there since 1949,” he said.
Saxmann, a 1943 graduate, played in the Hendersonville High School band. He talked extensively of his love of music and the band.
“We were good,” he said. “We went to Greensboro four or five times for band contests. We came out with real good scores.”
He served for a time in the Navy and was discharged in 1945. In 1946, his mother died.
After moving to Indiana, Saxmann only saw Shipman on occasional trips to Hendersonville when he came to town to visit his father.
“Dad was living alone and things were not good for him,” Saxmann said.
In the early 1960s, Saxmann and his third wife moved the elder Saxmann to live with them in Indianapolis.
“In 1966, things were going bad for me,” Saxmann said.

Investigation

The State Bureau of Investigation and late Henderson County Sheriff Paul Z. Hill began the investigation into Saxmann. The investigation continued into the term of the late Sheriff James Kilpatrick.
Saxmann recalls the murder and detectives’ interest in him back then.
“Vernon was one of two declared murdered,” Saxmann said from his bed last month in Indianapolis. “It tore me up. There was too much that wouldn’t be said. There were so many things that happened around then.
“Two law enforcement men came up here and were acting like they were trying to get me involved in the thing,” he said.
Saxmann would not elaborate on this statement.
Saxmann’s father had refinanced the property on Maple Street about 1960. In 1962, about the same time Saxmann moved his elderly father to Indianapolis, a deed gave Saxmann one-half interest in the property. The house was rented.
To expedite mortgage payments to the Hendersonville bank, Shipman agreed to collect the rent and make the mortgage payments with the rent payment.
In the fall of 1965, Saxmann discovered the rental payments were not being given to the bank. The chiropractor accused Charles Glass of pocketing the money.
Saxmann sat up straight and energetically in his bed, speaking loudly and clearly. His eyes were filled with anger.
“I was upset. He got my money,” he said. “That other guy (Glass) was very greedy. I didn’t like that guy at all. I just didn’t like him.
“I set up that plan,” he said. “At first, the money was coming in regularly. Then it got choppy. I was not getting the money right. I should have been getting the money from that rent thing.”
The bank sent out foreclosure warnings to Saxmann.
According to law enforcement reports, in November 1965, an employee of the Tempo Music Shop overheard a heated argument between Saxmann and Glass. The man “was mad at Glass because he had taken the rent money,” the witness said.
Saxmann accused Glass of pocketing the rental cash instead of putting “the money away like he said he would.”
“He (Glass) told me he didn’t have it (money),” Saxmann said in the interview last month. “At the time, things got pretty heavy.
“Charles Glass was behind the thing and took my money,” he said. “Vernon Shipman was a good friend. I feel very strongly that Charles Glass sold me out.”

Detectives question Saxmann

In spring 1966, Saxmann, who was 40 in 1966, and his third wife were having marital problems.
“I was 12 years younger than him,” Cathaleen Heidloff said from her home in Indianapolis. “He had his father there living with us and I was trying to go to beauty school.”
She told Saxmann that she wanted a divorce.
In May 1966, Saxmann attempted suicide with a gun, according to Indianapolis police reports.
“He tried to kill himself in the house,” Heidloff said. “His father and I were in the house.”
She called for emergency help. After the police arrived, she left and never returned. Heidloff said she never talked to Saxmann again.
The late Mildred Banther of Hendersonville offered to buy the Maple Street house in June 1966. Saxmann said he would be in Hendersonville in 30 days and they would talk then. She told him she was going on vacation July 4 and hoped he would wait until she returned. After the bodies were discovered, she called Saxmann to tell him Shipman was dead.
She told investigators Saxmann cried. She asked if he wanted her to send him newspapers and he said no. He said he needed to go and he never called her back.
Saxmann saw his last patient on Thursday, July 14, 1966. His next appointment was 12:30 p.m. Monday, July 18.
The victims were murdered between 7 and 8:30 p.m. Sunday, July 17, investigators say.
Heidloff said Saxmann went to Batesville, Ind., on Thursdays, where he saw patients in an office there.
“I never knew him to take off for weekends, though,” she said.
Heidloff apparently knew little about Saxmann or his past. She said he rented the duplex at 6120 E. 21 St. in Indianapolis. But court records show Saxmann owned the duplex.
After the triple murder, the Saxmann house in Hendersonville went into foreclosure. It was sold Nov. 7, 1966, on the steps of the Henderson County Courthouse. Banther bought it. A person who later moved into the house found a frog-gigging pole with one tine broken off in a closet. She turned it into Sheriff Kilpatrick in February 1967.
The SBI crime lab tested the frog gig and found blood, but, with the technology available at the time, could not determine if it was human or amphibian.
“The frog gig could possibly have been the instrument used in the perforations of the victims’ bodies,” the report states.
Indianapolis police conducted an interview with Saxmann and his estranged wife. He could not account for his time the weekend of the murders.
In October 2006, Saxmann still could not remember where he was that weekend in 1966. He remembered detectives questioning him.
“They were going to bring charges,” he said. “I didn’t know where I was that day.”
Saxmann alluded to a person who could give him an alibi.
“There was a buddy of mine,” he began to say. His speech was barely audible and his mind drifted. “I had proof I was up here. We were raising hell.”
When asked if he ever knew a woman named Louise Davis Shumate, Saxmann had no recollection of such a person.
A date for a polygraph test was set in 1967. At the appointed time, Saxmann’s lawyer came and said his client would not take the test.
“Every time they set him up to take the polygraph he didn’t show,” said Gene Jarvis of the Asheville Police Department, which was also investigating the murders.
“He never returned to Hendersonville,” said retired Hendersonville Police Chief Bill Powers.
Notices were sent to Saxmann saying he had $700 coming to him from the foreclosure sale of the Maple Street house. He never came to Hendersonville to collect it.
In the interview last month he never answered why he never returned to Hendersonville, and at times he did not speak for a long period.
“I am a miserable person,” he said near the end of a day with a reporter. “They’re after my money. I’m scared. They’re going to come to arrest me.”

A sister

Saxmann has an estranged sister, Marian Saxmann Edney, who married Vernon Edney, a Henderson County native, about 1947. The couple left Hendersonville. She lives in Sacramento, Calif. Her husband is deceased.
Last week, she remembered more about her friend, murder victim Vernon Shipman, than she did about her brother.
“Vernon’s mother was a very doting person,” she said. “She ruled his life. They lived next door to me.”
Edney said she and her brother were not close.
“I didn’t deal with my brother too much,” she said. “He was five years younger than I was.”
As a child, her brother loved dogs, she said.
“I never remember any violent business or temper,” she said. “My dad was a very strict person.”
She spent a lot of time with Shipman and his mother, she said.
“We would go shopping together,” she said. “On Saturdays, we sat on the street and watched the crowds go by. Vernon and I liked the old band music. We used to dance a lot to it at his house and when we would go out on Saturday nights.”
Shipman and Saxmann’s sister attended Hendersonville High School together. They attended business college in Asheville.
Edney said sometime in the 1940s her brother worked in Asheville.
In the 1940s Shipman and Edney moved to Washington. The pair rented boarding rooms from Saxmann’s aunt. They got jobs with the federal government.
“He (Shipman) finally moved out of the boarding house and I came home to North Carolina,” she said. “He stayed up there. Things started changing when he went to D.C. He got mixed up with people.”
She heard about her old friend’s death on the radio in California.
“I heard the news on the radio when I was getting ready to go to work,” she said. “I was so shocked. I couldn’t believe it. We were very close.”
She did not know her brother was a suspect in the murders.
“He’s lived in Indianapolis for years,” she said. “I just can’t believe my brother would do anything like that. I haven’t seen him since my father died.”

No contact with her brother

Edney said she had no contact with her brother or her father from 1947 until her father’s death in 1967. In 1947, her father wrote a will leaving everything to her brother, she said.
“I was disowned,” she said. “I was left out of the will. My brother got everything. I broke off all relations with them after Dad disowned me.”
She and her son traveled from California to attend her father’s funeral in Indianapolis in February 1967.
“I didn’t want that on my conscience,” she said.
Her brother asked her about the family’s property in Hendersonville.
“He asked me what happened to the property,” she said. “I had nothing to do with the property. I had lived in California since 1947.”
Edney did not know that the property had gone into foreclosure and sold at public auction.

Saxmann home

Saxmann was declared incompetent this year (2006) in a Marion County, Ind., court and appointed a lawyer to serve as his guardian after the Health Department discovered he was living without sewer and water service.
The small brick duplex with white siding that he owns in Windsor Village, a subdivision constructed soon after World War II, is located in an unsafe neighborhood in Indianapolis today. One Indianapolis police officer described it as “one of the worst neighborhoods in my township.” At one time, police built a barricade so there was only one way in or out in order to control the drug trade.
In October, a large Dumpster belonging to an Indianapolis garbage service sat in the driveway of Saxmann’s home. The Dumpster was filled with possessions from the house.
The duplex was deserted, with broken glass and liquor bottles scattered around. The yard, except for mowed grass, had not been tended in quite a while.
Clear, one-gallon plastic jugs covered the back seat and passenger seat of his Ford Taurus, almost to the roof of the car. The car’s handicapped license tag had expired.
After the Health Department discovered Saxmann living in the home without water and sewer service, he was taken to a hospital and later to a nursing home.

Childhood home

As Saxmann began to drift off to sleep in his room at the nursing home, he asked to return to Hendersonville.
He frequently checks to make certain a clear, hard, plastic box, containing old papers and letters stacked in piles and held together with rubber bands, is nearby.
“Someone broke into my house,” he said. “Someone’s got my credit card and some money. They’re trying to use information to set me up.”
He’s proud of the photograph on his bedstand.
“When I was younger, people told me I looked like Paul Newman,” he said.
He frequently requested help to leave the facility in which he finds himself.
“I want to see the mountains and Jump-Off,” he said. “Don’t leave. Take me with you.”

http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20061117/NEWS/611170364?p=1&tc=pg

INVESTIGATORS TURN TO OUTSIDE HELP

By Jennie Jones Giles
Paul Saxmann, identified in police files as a suspect in the 1966 triple slaying of Vernon Shipman, Charles Glass and Louise Davis Shumate, had no knowledge of where he was the weekend of the murders. He also said only two people were murdered.
When shown a line-up of black-and-white photographs from the time period, one of which was Saxmann, James Ronald Hollifield, a witness who saw the victims with a third man in Shipman’s car on the date of the murder, could not identify Saxmann as the third man.
“I did not see him clearly, most of his face was out of my view,” Hollifield said.
Ann Weber and Pamela Laughon, psychology professors at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, said that it is possible to commit a murder and not remember.
“It is indeed possible for someone to commit murder and just about any other behavior without remembering it,” Weber said. “Human memory is not a form of videotape or any other sort of ‘record’ of experience. Rather, memory depends on attention and consciousness at the time of input, as well as reconstruction at the time of recall.”
“People do commit murders and don’t recall it,” Laughon said. “It can be so horrific that even the people who do the murders are inclined to put it out of their minds.”
Psychogenic amnesia, or loss of memory, is a dissociate disorder, Weber said.
“Emotion also strongly affects both memory and retrieval, so that we either remember or forget things at the point of input, or cannot retrieve them later,” she said.

‘A one-time mass murderer’

Based on the Times-News account of a lengthy visit with Saxmann last month at a nursing home in Indianapolis, Laughon said it would be impossible to rule him in or out as a suspect. More interviews and information would be needed, she said.
But the psychologist did offer other insights into the unsolved mystery after reviewing the Times-News series.
“This is a one-time mass murderer,” Laughon, a forensic psychologist, said this week. “The person who committed this murder was alone. It is not group-induced criminal behavior.
“This appears to be a single, mass homicide,” she said. “There is an emotional side to the crime. It doesn’t sound like a stranger killing.”

Police seek FBI profiler

The Hendersonville Police Department has recently started the first steps in an attempt to solve the 40-year-old murder mystery.
Police Capt. John Nicholson initiated the process for assistance from the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. The application forms, one on each of the victims in the unsolved triple murder, were mailed last week to the SBI.
Nicholson also submitted evidence to the SBI Western Lab for re-examination. He would not say what evidence was submitted.
“They told me I could resubmit only because there are new technologies that were not available in the 1960s for processing of evidence,” Nicholson said.
“I commend the Police Department for doing what they have done,” Henderson County Sheriff-elect Rick Davis said Friday.
The Intelligence Section of the SBI in Raleigh does the data entry and enters the ViCAP information into the FBI system for entry to the FBI’s National Center for Analysis of Violent Crime. It is not known how soon the SBI would complete the data entry.
An FBI profile is one way to rule out suspects.
Nicholson filled out 38-page questionnaires on each of the victims. Questions related to evidence, the crime scene, information on the victims, a timeline, geographical information, types of injuries, cause of death and suspect offender information.
It is not known for certain if the FBI will assign a profiler in the Behavioral Science Unit to study the case. Even if an FBI profiler is unable to work the case in the near future, the information can be compared to other crimes and murders in the data base for similarities, Nicholson said.
“I have spoken to the FBI in Charlotte,” Nicholson said. “The possibility of a profile, according to them, due to the age of the case, would not be a priority and would compete against current open cases of missing persons and serial murders. They said if it was done, it might be years.”
Retired profilers, who work with law enforcement and charge a fee for their service, have indicated they are interested in the case.
Most of the physical evidence related to the case has disappeared.

Reward fund

There was a reward fund started shortly after the murders, with contributions from the Times-News, the WNC Tribune, Henderson County Board of Commissioners, Hendersonville City Council, Henderson County Chamber of Commerce, the estate of Shumate, and individuals.
In 1970, the reward was for more than $4,000. It was at the former Northwestern Bank. Over the years, the bank merged with other financial institutions: First Union, Sun Trust and Wachovia. Accounts at the Northwestern Bank on U.S. 25 North were moved to NCNB, now Bank of America. Bank officials cannot locate a trust fund. Without knowing the account number or a person’s name in charge of the account, it is difficult to search the records.
Officials at Sun Trust, Wachovia and Bank of America continue to search records.
The fund could have been returned to the state Treasury Department as unclaimed money. Representatives with the unclaimed money division of the state Treasury Department were given the information on the fund.
Staff is searching the accounts. So far, nothing has been found. Officials with the state Treasury Department said they are continuing to search.
If the reward fund can be located, it could be used to hire a retired profiler or for further investigation of the murders.
Davis and Hendersonville Police Chief Donnie Parks agree that finding the reward fund would be helpful.
“Five thousand dollars is not much money to be spending when you’re talking about triple homicide,” Davis said.
A group of retired profilers in Washington estimate it would cost $5,000 to $10,000, depending on whether evidence was discovered or trips would be needed, to complete a profile.
Parks said contributions to a fund to hire the group could be sent to the Hendersonville Police Department.

Task force

“This case is worthy of looking into,” Davis said. “But it needs to be done properly.”
The murders are technically a Sheriff’s Department case. The Police Department was the first investigating agency, as the case began as a missing persons’ report in the city. Shipman’s car was found abandoned in the city. During the first eight years of the case, the departments worked the case together.
The SBI, the lead investigating agency in the first eight years, considers the case inactive.
Any task force would need input from all three agencies.
“We would need some type of task force formed,” Davis said. “It is critical to have involvement from all three. We also have to get the involvement of the DA’s office and staff attorneys.”
“It definitely wouldn’t hurt to put all of our heads together and look at all the information to see what we’ve got,” Parks said. “Then we could see if a task force would be justified.”
The 40-year-old case is so unique, the situation so cold, that “we would have to do the steps correctly, by the numbers,” Davis said. “It’s a very unique situation.”
Most of the suspects are deceased. To investigate and determine that the primary suspect is deceased and no way of bringing that person to trial presents a complicated legal issue, Davis said.
“It would take an attorney to determine if there are legal repercussions for simply pointing the finger,” he said.
“If we find the primary suspect is deceased, we can’t interview him,” Parks said. “This does not give him every opportunity to disprove suspicion.”
“All the agencies involved need to sit down and talk about this and see what the next step would be,” Davis said. “I would love to have a retired detective come back and do part time work on it.”
“First, we need to see what happens with the submissions sent to the FBI and see what the group of retired profilers find,” Parks said. “The other step we need to take is to assess whatever physical evidence might still be available. I would like to see every reasonable effort made to find out what really happened.”

New leads

A task force could review all information on the case, including additional information obtained by the Times-News in its July series on the murders. Several tips and pieces of information have been received since the series was published, including at least three people who saw the victims on the day of the murder, and information on other potential suspects.
Thorough and complete victimologies of all three victims are needed, Laughon said. With permission from surviving relatives, many records could be obtained that were not obtained in earlier investigations.
It is apparent that victimologies were not thorough in initial investigations, she said.
“Especially related to the female victim,” she said. “There are hundreds of things that could be done on this case.”
Drawings based on autopsy reports need to be completed, if photographs cannot be found, of the puncture wounds, she said.
“If the puncture wounds were postmortem, then usually it’s a person whose anger is still there,” she said. “It’s a last jab at the victim.”
Cellmates, family members and acquaintances of other suspects could also be interviewed. Fingerprints found on Shipman’s car could be sent through the national data base and compared to youths who, in 1966, took a joy ride in the car after it was abandoned.
Laughon said these men need to be contacted. They might remember objects in the car or the condition of the car that would help the investigation.
A variety of factors hindered the initial investigation of the case, starting with inexperience and lack of training of investigators. There were not the modern technologies available today. The heat and summer storms degraded the evidence and the crime scene and a herd of investigators damaged the scene even further.
Political rivalries undercut the continuity needed to stick with a case, and information on the case was scattered among rival agencies, with no coordinated effort.
The fact Shipman and Glass were gay complicated the investigation. Men in the gay community feared being identified as gay and avoided interviews or claimed they had no knowledge.
Forty years later, people who knew the victims and attended Glass’ exotic parties might be willing to finally talk.
“We ought to try to get some answers,” Parks said. “I’m sure the loved ones of the victims would like to see closure.”
“There is a limited amount of time here to investigate this case before people die,” Laughon said. “A lot more work needs to be done.”

http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20061117/NEWS/611170359?p=1&tc=pg

SUSPECT PAUL SAXMANN DIES

By Jennie Jones Giles
Paul Saxmann, an 80-year-old former chiropractor living in a nursing home in Indianapolis, was the last living identified and named primary suspect in an unsolved 1966 triple murder in Henderson County until his death Friday (Nov. 24, 2006).
Jim Shirley, a funeral director with Shirley Brothers Funeral Home in Indianapolis, called the Times-News on Tuesday with the news of Saxmann’s death.
There were no known family members or friends for the funeral home staff to consult concerning funeral arrangements or enough information on him to write an obituary. During a Web search, funeral home Director Jim Shirley found the Times-News story published Nov. 17.
“I was amazed,” Shirley said. “I thought you might want to know that he died.”
The owner of the Tempo Music Shop on Main Street and employee of the N.C. Employment Service, Vernon Shipman, 43, and the manager of Tempo Music Shop, Charles Glass, 36, both of Hendersonville, were brutally murdered July 17, 1966, along with a woman, Louise Davis Shumate of Asheville. Their bodies were found five days later in a crude semi-circle in a grassy clearing in the woods off North Lake Summit Road.
Each victim suffered brutal blows to the head. Some clues touched off rumors about voodoo and Klan involvement.
The victims were an interesting trio. Glass was a flamboyant showman, music lover and connoisseur of all things Oriental – and also a self-styled expert in voodoo. Shipman was a neat, meticulous gentleman who enjoyed cooking and loved music. Shumate was a woman who appears to have led a double life and who was a paradox, even to her family.

Personal possessions

In his nursing home in October, Saxmann had a plastic box containing numerous letters and papers. They were neatly stacked and wrapped with rubber bands and he frequently checked to make certain the box was nearby.
On Wednesday, the nursing home was contacted by Times-News staff. After a search, the box and photos were located and placed in a safe place.
The nursing home staff wants to know who will claim the personal effects and when.
The Hendersonville Police Department would like to have them, said Capt. John Nicholson.
“We would need a faxed and notarized statement saying we could have them from his surviving sister,” Nicholson said. “If we can get that, we will pay for the postage to have them shipped.”
Times-News staff on Tuesday contacted persons who informed Saxmann’s estranged sister, Marian Saxmann Edney of California, of her brother’s death. She stated the authorities could have the papers, but had not contacted the Police Department by Wednesday night.
The Times-News discovered that Saxmann was married three times. Court records in Indianapolis indicate he adopted two children while married to his second wife.
When asked about his children, Saxmann replied, clearly agitated and angry: “Don’t ask me questions like that.”
Saxmann was declared incompetent this year and appointed a lawyer to serve as his guardian. The guardian contacted the adopted son earlier in the year in Red Oak, Texas, Shirley said. The son said he wanted nothing to do with Saxmann, the funeral director said Tuesday.
Saxmann’s body will be returned to Hendersonville for burial at Oakdale Cemetery, where his mother is buried, Shirley said.
His father died in February 1967 in Indianapolis, where his body was interred.

Local connections

In October, Saxmann clearly remembered his hometown, the town in which he grew up next door to murder victim Vernon Shipman on Maple Street.
Saxmann was born in Hendersonville in June 1926, within a month after his parents, the late George and Ella Esther Evans Saxmann, bought the house next door to the Shipmans.
“I’ve been away from there since 1949,” he said.
The Times-News discovered through research and by talking with Saxmann, that he was a 1943 graduate of Hendersonville High School and played in the band. He served for a time in the Navy and was discharged in 1945.

Investigation

The State Bureau of Investigation and late Henderson County Sheriff Paul Z. Hill began the investigation into Saxmann. The investigation continued into the term of the late Sheriff James Kilpatrick. To this day, Saxmann is still a strong suspect in the opinion of most investigators.
“Vernon was one of two declared murdered,” Saxmann said from his bed last month in Indianapolis. “Two law enforcement men came up here and were acting like they were trying to get me involved in the thing.”
To expedite mortgage payments from Indianapolis to the Hendersonville bank on the Saxmann property on Maple Street, Shipman agreed to collect the rent and make the mortgage payments with the rent payment.
In the fall of 1965, Saxmann discovered the rental payments were not being given to the bank. The chiropractor accused Charles Glass of pocketing the money.
He sat up straight and energetically in his bed, speaking loudly and clearly. His eyes were filled with anger.
“I was upset. He got my money,” he said. “That other guy (Charles Glass) was very greedy. I didn’t like that guy at all. I just didn’t like him.
“Charles Glass was behind the thing and took my money,” he said. “Vernon Shipman was a good friend. I feel very strongly that Charles Glass sold me out.”
After the triple slayings, the Saxmann house in Hendersonville went into foreclosure. It was sold Nov. 7, 1966, on the steps of the Henderson County Courthouse. A person who later moved into the house found a frog-gigging pole with one tine broken off in a closet. The pole was given to Sheriff Kilpatrick in February 1967.
The SBI crime lab tested the frog gig and found blood, but, with the technology available at the time, could not determine if it was human or amphibian.
“The frog gig could possibly have been the instrument used in the perforations of the victims’ bodies,” the report states.
Indianapolis police conducted an interview with Saxmann. He could not account for his time the weekend of the murders.
In October, Saxmann still could not remember where he was that weekend in 1966.
“They were going to bring charges,” he said. “I didn’t know where I was that day.”
When asked if he ever knew a woman named Louise Davis Shumate, Saxmann had no recollection of such a person.
A date for a polygraph test was set in 1967. At the appointed time, Saxmann’s lawyer came and said his client would not take the test.

http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20061130/NEWS/611300320?p=1&tc=pg

TRIPLE-MURDER SUSPECT’S BURIAL SOLITARY

By Jennie Jones Giles
Paul Saxmann, one of several suspects in the 1966 unsolved triple murder, was buried Friday (Dec. 2, 2006) in Oakdale Cemetery.
Saxmann, 80, died Nov. 24. At the time of his death, he was the only identified suspect still living. The former chiropractor was living at a nursing home in Indianapolis, Ind.
Saxmann’s grave is next to the grave of his mother, Ella Esther Evans Saxmann, who died in 1946, and in close proximity to Shipman family plots.
Vernon Shipman, 43, was one of the three murder victims July 17, 1966. The bodies of Shipman, the owner of the Tempo Music Shop on Main Street and employee of the N.C. Employment Service, Charles Glass, 36, both of Hendersonville and Louise Davis Shumate, 62, of Asheville were found five days later in a crude semi-circle in a grassy clearing in the woods off North Lake Summit Road.
Each victim suffered brutal blows to the head. Some clues touched off rumors about voodoo and Klan involvement.

Burial

The only people in attendance at Saxmann’s burial were directors from the Shuler Funeral Home and a Times-News reporter and photographer. There was no service.
A friend of Saxmann’s, Naomi Baker of Indianapolis, said Saxmann made arrangements with the Shirley Brothers Funeral Home in that city to have his body returned to Hendersonville.
“He voiced his wish to be buried by his mother in North Carolina,” Baker said.
Baker knew Saxmann in the 1950s, but lost track of him over the years, she said. She learned of his illness about a year ago and began visiting him in the hospital and nursing home.
“I’ve known him since chiropractor school,” she said. “I lost track of him during the years, but I don’t believe he could commit murder. He was an impatient person and relationships didn’t come easy for him.
“He was such a needy person at the end,” she said. “He was grieving over the fact he never sent his father’s body back (from Indianapolis) to be buried next to his mother.”
Saxmann’s father died in Indianapolis in February 1967, about seven months after the triple murder.
Saxmann suffered from several medical conditions and was having problems eating, she said.
“I think his system just shut down,” Baker said. “He told my brother that he had made his peace with God and his only regret was that he didn’t apologize to some people.”

Personal possessions

In his nursing home in October, Saxmann had a plastic box containing numerous letters and papers. They were neatly stacked and wrapped with rubber bands and he frequently checked to make certain the box was nearby.
Family members are trying to have personal family mementos and the box returned to Hendersonville.
The Hendersonville Police Department would like to look at the letters and papers, said Capt. John Nicholson.
Saxmann was declared incompetent this year and appointed a lawyer to serve as his guardian.
He was born in Hendersonville in June 1926, within a month after his parents bought a house next door to the family home of Vernon Shipman, one of three victims in the town’s most sensational murder case 40 years later.
Saxmann was a 1943 graduate of Hendersonville High School and played in the band. He served for a time in the Navy and was discharged in 1945.

A suspect

The State Bureau of Investigation and late Henderson County Sheriff Paul Z. Hill began the investigation into Saxmann. The investigation continued into the term of the late Sheriff James Kilpatrick. Saxmann was considered a strong suspect in the opinion of most investigators.
To expedite mortgage payments from Indianapolis to the Hendersonville bank on the Saxmann property on Maple Street, murder victim Shipman agreed to collect the rent and make the mortgage payments with the rent payment.
In the fall of 1965, Saxmann discovered the rental payments were not being given to the bank. The chiropractor accused Charles Glass of pocketing the money.
After the triple slayings, the Saxmann house in Hendersonville went into foreclosure. It was sold Nov. 7, 1966, on the steps of the Henderson County Courthouse. A person who later moved into the house found a frog-gigging pole in a closet with one tine broken off. The pole was given to Sheriff Kilpatrick in February 1967.
The SBI crime lab tested the frog gig and found blood, but with the technology available at the time, could not determine if it was human or amphibian.
“The frog gig could possibly have been the instrument used in the perforations of the victims’ bodies,” the report states.
Indianapolis police conducted an interview with Saxmann. He could not account for his time the weekend of the murders. A date for a polygraph test was set in 1967. At the appointed time, Saxmann’s lawyer appeared and said his client would not take the test.
In an interview in October, Saxmann denied any involvement in the murders and stated he could not remember where he was the weekend of the triple murder.

http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20061202/NEWS/612020334?p=1&tc=pg

UNCA PSYCHOLOGY CLASS TAKES ON 1966 MURDER MYSTERY