Police now had a name, and with it came a photograph of the victim: a casual sorority photo showing a fresh-skinned, moderately attractive young woman with close-cut hair, clear, bright eyes averted from the camera and a knowing expression somewhere between a Mona Lisa smile and a smirk. It is, of Theora Hix, a perfect representation—enigmatic and beguiling, a mysteriously simple photograph that hints at carefully concealed secrets.
The investigation now centered on tracing Theora’s last earthly hours for clues to her killer’s identity and explanations for why she had to die.
The first solid lead came from taxicab driver Earl Nickles, who had picked up a distracted young woman answering Theora’s description near Neil Avenue around the time Theora left Bertha Dillon at the OSU switchboard. Neil Avenue is one of the main north–south streets that borders the OSU campus and runs directly into downtown Columbus.
“She seemed all worried,” he told the Dispatch. “She told me to drive to the Hilltop and said that she wanted to go by way of Grandview Avenue. She said she thought she might see a man in a coupe.
“She asked me for cigarettes three times going over but didn’t smoke more than a part of each one,” he added.
When the woman failed to find what she was looking for at Sullivant Avenue and Eureka Street in the Hilltop district, she told Nickles to drive back to Neil.
“She asked for two more cigarettes on the way back but didn’t smoke more than two puffs on each one,” he said. “She was all fidgety about something.”
The most frequently used photograph of Theora Hix.
Theora’s nervous behavior was not the only reason Nickles remembered the fare. Theora directed the cabbie to drive a sixteen-mile circuit along a meandering route that was much longer than necessary. Directing Nickles to use Grandview Avenue took Theora in the opposite direction of the Hilltop area. The trip that took nearly an hour might have been accomplished in half that time if they had used the most direct route then available. Police learned later that the trip took Theora past a number of locations of significance in her secret life.
Nickles dropped the woman off at Neil and Tenth Avenues near the OSU hospital and didn’t give the fare a second thought until the papers reported the murder. Other witnesses picked up the story. More than one person confirmed that the woman Nickles let off was seen in the company of an older, bald-headed, bespectacled man driving a blue coupe.
The deeper the police looked into the life of their murder victim for clues, the more mysterious Theora became. Everyone they located who was acquainted with Theora really did not know her at all. Detectives found no shortage of persons willing to step forward to say what a pleasant, polite, hardworking young woman she was, but no one had the least bit of information about her that was not superficial. The Theora everyone knew was a quiet, intelligent, somewhat standoffish co-worker or roommate—nothing more. She was as inscrutable as the Sphinx, surrendering her secrets to no one.
“Theora was an unusual girl in some ways,” Alice Bustin said. “She lived here in the apartment with Beatrice and me since last September, but we didn’t know much about her.”
She played tennis—on the municipal courts near the shooting range—and golf and liked to take walks, the Bustin sisters said. She was a good worker and showed up on time, said her boss in the veterinary school stenographer’s pool.
“She came here…after the conclusion of her examinations for full time work but no one in the office really knew her and we never saw her with anyone except another girl who called for her for luncheon,” Mrs. J.H. Wright, assistant to the dean of the OSU graduate school, told reporters hungry for any scrap of information about the reclusive murder victim.
The newspapers launched their own investigations into the background of the mysterious victim. The less people knew of her, the more driven the papers became to solve the riddle that was Theora Hix.
Those who spoke kindly could only call her shy and retiring; the less charitable called Theora moody. Of men, however, everyone was of the same opinion: Theora had little interest in them, and anything she did with men she kept to herself.
“She chatted freely with us, but both Alice and I knew that it was practically useless to ask her how she liked her date the preceding night, what she did, where she went, or with whom she dated,” said classmate Flora Pedicord of Zanesville, Ohio. “She wouldn’t tell us.”
She seldom dated, but her acquaintances and roommates said that she might have been making time with an older gentleman who was connected to the university. She did not talk about it; they did not press her and had no idea who that man might have been.
“She never told us a word and we never attempted to draw her into such conversation,” Pedicord said, adding that “rumors were persistent that she had been keeping company with a man and that a few months ago had a quarrel with him. After that she appeared to enjoy herself more with her girl friends.” She added ominously that there were additional rumors that Theora had once again taken up with that man.
Theora had always been a reticent date, friends recalled. “When we had a party it was always necessary to make a blind date for Theora,” a high school classmate tracked down in Muskegon, Michigan, told the Dispatch. “She never wanted to go with the same man twice.”
Detectives going through Theora’s belongings came across her bank passbooks, which only deepened the mystery. The investigators found one account at the Buckeye Building & Loan Association that contained $615 and another that indicated she had closed an account at the Columbian Building & Loan Association containing $1,863. At one time, Theora had enough money to buy a top-of-the-line Buick sedan for cash with money left over or put down 50 percent on a home in Columbus. Needless to say, it was unusual for a college student, even a working student on a stipend, to have banked so much money. No one, including her family, could say where Theora had gotten the funds. Her father told investigators he gave his daughter $600 annually for living expenses. Her hidden assets were particularly puzzling because Theora was known on occasion to take advantage of the university’s short-term student loan program.
Equally shocking was the .41-caliber Derringer that Theora kept in a drawer.
Police found several letters signed “Janet” that Theora saved, which convinced them that the young woman was living a double life. It was likely that at least one was really written by a man: “You recall that I showed you a little place and had you feel it, and which, severed, would prevent possible trouble. Well, I have been wanting to snip them both for some time…So thinking that this was a good time to try, I did fix the little one only, did it as soon as I came back. It was simple and easy, and all went well until Friday.”
The writer goes on to describe how during a golf match some “swelling occurred…and an annoying pain” like “a long sharp, smooth ice-pick.” The letter expresses some concern about a forthcoming visit: “There is a chance I may not be able to come up. And if I do come up, may not be able then.” The last sentence was underlined.
The other letters contained musings that the detectives thought might—presuming the letters were actually written by another woman—explain why Theora was not overly interested in men. One described a painful separation between Theora and the letter’s author, written when an apparently despondent Theora was living away from Columbus.
My Dearie…I am surprised to note that you put your entire condition of forlornness and turbulousness on the one thing and wish you never had. You once told me that you would never say that. Neither do I believe it…I could be contented just to be with you, omitting special features, and think you could also. I hope you will reconsider and can blame conditions rather than just the other.
Another hinted at a physical relationship between Theora and the mysterious “Janet.”
My Dearie: Awakened early about seven and of course thought of you at once. Wondered how tough it makes one feel for you to awaken, turn over, reach before opening your eyes, and found no one. I know because I did it yesterday. ’Tis awful…
And I never had such a joke as when I closed the door, clicked the key and reached for you; a long trip, all anticipation, no chance soon again, and I was greeted with a “No; I don’t want to muss my hair” and “I’m hungry.” Can you imagine anyone doing that? And further to sit quietly through a show for three hours more.
It was the newspapers that uncovered Theora’s more distant past, but there was little insight gained from it.
Born on Long Island, New York, Theora was the only child of a couple who had been married twenty years and had given up hope of ever becoming parents. Theora began her education in the New York City public school system, where her father, Melvin, was a principal. She came to Ohio State University by way of Northfield Seminary in Massachusetts, where she graduated as the single senior in the class of 1922. Northfield is a storied East Coast college preparatory school with a long résumé of illustrious graduates. Religion was important to the Hix family, and that prompted them to take advantage of the Northfield Seminary’s mission to provide a first-class education to “young people who had limited access to education because they were poor,” according to the school’s history.
Mr. and Mrs. Melvin Hix, parents of the murdered woman. Courtesy of the Columbus Dispatch.
“Because we desired her to have in every respect the best moral and religious influence we sent her to the Northfield Seminary,” Melvin Hix told the Dispatch. (The school was prestigious, but it was not safe from scandal. Six years after Theora’s murder, a popular headmaster at the Northfield men’s seminary was slain by a sniper who shot him through a study window as he worked at his desk. The case remains unsolved.)
On the surface, she took the education to heart. Theora, whose name, her father told the papers, meant “god-given” in Greek, was an only child who had always expressed an interest in medicine and told her family that she was planning a career as a medical missionary.
“When her mother and I went to the graduation exercises all of her teachers came to us and praised her as to ability and character in the highest terms,” the grieving father told the paper when he arrived in Columbus. “She had been asked to act as a kind of monitor in her house. When girls wanted to go out or go shopping they were told they could go if Theora Hix would go with them.
“On account of her dignity and reliability and good sense she was trusted as no other girl in the house was trusted,” he continued. “Her teachers told me this and her fellow students will bear witness to that effect.”
Although she was considered trustworthy and respected by her peers—the 1922 school annual, the Gemini, describes how “her quiet and unassuming ways have won for her a warm place in the hearts of her many campus friends who would be glad to have her nearer”—the yearbook also hints at Theora’s adventurous side: “Her steadfastness of character and her loyalty of spirit have contributed much in upholding the standards of Northfield. Occasionally, however, ‘Teddy’ waxes frisky; if you do not believe it, ask her how to use the fire escape ropes.”
While the police looked at Theora’s more current activities for clues, the papers marked time and kept the story alive by digging up what they could about her past. Above her high-school graduation photo, the Dispatch headlined a story: “Miss Hix most bashful and worst man-hater in prep school” and reprinted a poem written about her by a Northfield classmate:
On a platform in a city square
Theora Hix did stand
And from her mouth did come,
The words “Down with man!”
All through the country she has traveled
This cry to all to make known.
For she has become a believer
In woman asserting her own.
Melvin Hix told reporters that he had feared his daughter might come to harm. “From her childhood she had one quality that caused some anxiety,” her father said. “She was fearless. Physically I do not think she knew the meaning of the word fear and we often warned her that evil men might attack her unaware, as they had done to so many girls.”
This part of Theora’s personality was repeatedly shared by her acquaintances, who all said she may have been shy and retiring but was also self-confident and dauntless when aroused. Her desire to obtain a medical degree when being a physician was still very much a man’s profession demonstrates this. Others said that Theora, who was larger and more muscular than many women, was equally confident in her ability to protect herself physically.
A portrait of Theora Hix. This photograph was not used by the press until the end of the trial. Courtesy of the Columbus Dispatch.
Almost everything the newspapers turned up failed to make Theora a sympathetic victim. While her parents insisted she was brought up with morals and traditional values and her employers and acquaintances reported that she was dependable and courteous, those descriptions did not mesh with a hatless, cigarette-smoking, “man-hating” young woman who did not attend church, had not visited her parents in more than a year and apparently had several thousand dollars secreted away in a couple of bank accounts around town. The fact that no one really knew Theora Hix meant that there was something there that Theora did not want people to know, the papers claimed—in not so sympathetic terms, as this unsigned United Press article shows.
One of the cleverest actresses on the stage of life.
That was one characterization of Miss Theora Hix which was heard today as the investigation following her murder continued to reveal startling facts about this quiet Ohio State co-ed.
Theora played a dangerous role. But she played it well, she knew her exits and entrances. She knew her lines. She had her campus audience completely oblivious of her other life behind the scenes.
This co-ed of mystery moved so surely, so deftly through her part that those who considered themselves her closest friends are the most startled as facts regarding the girl’s activities are brought forth.
Her stage was the Ohio State campus, and she played the part of a poor girl working her way through the hard, tedious medical school. She was quiet, with an English, old-fashioned attractiveness. In the role she acted before her classmates, there was no love interest, nothing to indicate that her relations with men were not of the most casual kind.
She borrowed money from University loan funds to carry out the part she was acting. She accepted various jobs, none of which paid excessive salaries.
But behind the scenes she had a large bank account, larger than that of most students. It is a mystery where she obtained much of this money.
She often denied having dates. Men did not seem to interest her to any great extent.
There are other facts now known which her campus group never suspected.
Which was the real Theora Hix? The quiet, unassuming co-ed? The woman revealed by the investigation?
Many think she was acting a part for her classmates, a few think her campus appearance was the real Theora and her other life was acted for some deep motive, still unknown.
Regardless of the answer, many admire the skill with which she kept that secret life hidden, a life that led to some tangle which caused her murder.
She was a good actress. Her campus audience never suspected she was playing a part.
Then death rang down the curtain.
