Alan March

It was the Summer of '69, the year man walked on the moon, Woodstock, Chappaquiddick, and  Charles Manson.  Though over-shadowed by world events, the mass murder in suburban Cincinnati received national news coverage.

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No Witnesses - The Story of Robbery and Murder at the Cabinet Supreme Savings and Loan, tells the story of three petty thugs who thought they would strike it rich by robbing a small bank.   Instead, they murdered four innocent women for less than one of the killers had in his own savings account.

 

Veteran journalist Kate March reported the story when it happened in September 1969.  Her coverage of the crime for the "Price Hill News," the community newspaper of which she was the editor, was just the beginning.

In, No Witnesses, she tells the full story as no one else could have done.

 

Partnering with retired Delhi Police Chief Howard Makin, Kate had access to information others didn't have. Digging for background, she went beyond the trial transcripts and coroner's reports.  Going beyond investigative notes, photos, and police reports, Kate went inside Ohio prisons to interview the killers themselves.  Kate interviewed the cops who caught the killers.  She interviewed the family members of the murdered women.  She found the witnesses who helped bring the killers to justice.

 

The result was No Witnesses-The Story of Robbery and Murder at the Cabinet Supreme Savings and Loan.  The title comes from the words of Raymond Kassow, one of the convicted killers.  Kassow devised the plan to rob the savings and loan.  He opened an account there to "case" the business weeks before the robbery.  And, when the fateful day arrived, Kassow provided the guns that would be used to kill the women inside.  As John Leigh and Watterson Johnson took the guns, Kassow said, "We can't have any witnesses, you understand?  No witnesses."  With that admonition blazing through his alcohol-soaked brain, John Leigh executed four women in the vault of the Cabinet Supreme Savings and Loan as Watterson Johnson held the women's purses and watched them die.

 

No Witnesses tells the story of the crime before, during, and after it was committed.  Reading the book, you become witness to the lives of young thugs and how they became murderers. You witness the escape and capture of the killers within days of their crimes.  You become witness to the trials that one defense attorney called "A Three Ring Circus."  You become witness to life inside the Ohio prison system and how a condemned killer copes with life behind bars. And you witness the impact the crime has had on the families of the victims and the entire community.

 

No Witnesses includes 12 pages of photos and diagrams.

 

After his mother's death, Alan edited her manuscript and privately published  the book.