Category Archives: Archives

Missed it by *That* Much…

Since 2017 also marks the passing of Dick Gautier, AKA Hymie the Robot from “Get Smart”, the title of this post has (somewhat) dual meaning. The second meaning is, well, I missed it. By “it” I mean another listing form the same auction house where I acquired the Cleveland Press photos of Mariann Colby and her son Dane.

This time, the photo in question was from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, circa 1966 when Mariann was declared not guilty of first degree murder by reason of insanity. This picture  was not available when I made my first series of purchases. I know, because I scoured the the listings of the eBay retailer I purchased my pictures from, and it was only through diligence and perseverance that I was able to find the five I’ve posted so far.

What’s ironic to me is that the auction  I missed was finalized on Nov. 25th, 2016… my birthday. Here’s hoping the person who bought this image also finds my post. The watermarked images from the auction are still on the web… so here they are with a couple more images I’ve culled:

A Picture’s Worth A Thousand Words

This has been on the back burner for quite some time. Given the flurry of activity on the Murder of the Boy: Archived Images from the Cleveland Plain Dealer page, I felt that it was time to post these images. Thanks to eBay, I have located actual press photos taken by the Cleveland Press, one of Cleveland’s daily newspapers that ceased operation in 1982. These photos have probably never been available for viewing since their initial publication.

The photos depict Mariann K. Colby during various stages of her arraignment; included as well is one picture of a very young Dane G. Colby.  Dane was used as a scapegoat by his mother, who tried to shift blame to him until it was proven that Dane could not have pulled the trigger on the gun that killed Cremer.

It’s taken me a while to process these photos emotionally.

 

 

The Murder of the Boy: Archived Images from the Cleveland Plain Dealer

Call it morbid fascination, but I’ve been poring through a a trove of material that my wife Lynne dug up years ago when she worked at the University of Rochester’s Rush Rhees Library.  When I was eight years old, my best friend Cremer was murdered by Mariann Colby, the mother of my other best friend Dane. Needless to say, it kicked off a very messed up period in my life. Lynne, who is quite a researcher, delved into this topic this about 25 years ago when we were dating. As she had access to tons of library resources she requested microfilm from the Plain Dealer Archives (not sure which institution stores them). Of course, back in those days one printed Microfiche onto thermal paper, so all of the pages were  much like a paper based negative.

So, I fired up the scanner a few weeks back and started to process the images. I started off with a Cremer’s picture which appears to be a either a standard “portrait” done by a photo studio or perhaps an photo touched up by the newspaper’s photo department.  The picture of Mariann looks like it was taken outside of the courtroom, her expression quite disturbing. I do remember being disturbed by the fact that my name wasn’t in the paper. It wasn’t until later, after Mariann’s arrest, I realized how close I came to being with Cremer on the day he was murdered.

I’ve added to the mix photos of other murdered children that were part of a companion article on Child Killers. Didn’t get the entire article, so I had to look up the names of the children to get more information. I was surprised to find out that Beverly Jarosz’s murder is still unsolved.

Once again, kudos to Lynne for digging up this information. There doesn’t seem to be much of any information about Cremer Young on the web. In this day & age information like this is quite incendiary; I’m certain that Nancy Grace would’ve hounded Mrs. Colby to no end.