On Thursday, June 13, Theora left the Ohio State University hospital switchboard and headed out to Neil Avenue, looking for Dr. Snook. Earlier in the day, she had called Snook and arranged to meet him about 8:00 p.m. Although each was in the area of their agreed-upon meeting place, they failed to connect. As a result, Theora took her cab ride with Earl Nickels, and Snook went to the state market to buy some food for his “lunch,” which he normally ate when he returned home late in the evening. He parked his dark blue Ford coupe on High Street near the corner of Twelfth Avenue by the OSU Student Union and walked to a mailbox to deposit some letters. As he started back toward his car, he saw Theora approaching it from the opposite direction.
They said little to each other as they drove north on High Street, away from the campus. The air was close and damp; it was going to rain any moment, and that only seemed to add to the tense atmosphere in the car.
“Did you eat anything?” Theora asked.
“No.”
“I did. I left a bit early and had a bite to eat and I brought you a sandwich,” Theora said, handing a roast beef sandwich wrapped in white butcher paper.
“Do you want to go to the apartment?” Snook asked. “If we’re going to give it up, we might as well for one last time.”
“Not particularly,” Theora replied. “Let’s go out somewhere.”
“Then give me your key before I forget,” Snook said. Theora dug through her handbag and extracted a key ring. She pulled a key off the chain and gave it to him.
They turned west on Lane Avenue and headed toward the Scioto Country Club, where Snook had left a pair of shooting glasses he needed for the next day.
As they drove away from the country club, the streetlights of Upper Arlington began to illuminate behind them. Snook and Theora continued west on Lane, watching the last rays reflect off the bottom of the ominously dark clouds as the sun slipped below the horizon in front of them. It was near the height of summer, and the days were long in the Midwest. Once the sun went down, darkness came upon the couple quickly. The waxing quarter moon was obscured by the heavy, low-hanging clouds that would soon drench the area in rain.
“I’m going out of town this weekend,” he said. “I’m going to Lebanon.”
“I don’t want you to go,” Theora replied petulantly.
“I’m sorry, I promised Mother that I would come and that I would bring my wife and the baby.”
The mention of Helen Snook sent Theora into a rage, and the young woman cursed her rival. Snook had expected a scene like this. More than once, Theora had demanded that he not go on a trip, and outings involving his family were particularly galling to her. Snook said nothing as Theora sank back into the upholstery, her arms crossed and her chin quivering. When she was in a mood like this, there was nothing he could do.
The professor was tired of Theora’s sulking and started to discuss shooting. They were on the far west outskirts of the city now, not far from the New York Central railroad shooting range on McKinley Avenue. Snook had been there earlier in the day watching a shooting match between the Columbus Division of Police and a team from New York City. He was no stranger to the range or the police department that used it for practice. He had been part of a committee of experts who helped the department select ammunition for the new Colt revolvers the officers now carried.
In an effort to distract Theora and perhaps bring her out of her funk, Snook pulled into the range and drove some distance into the field. Because Theora had enjoyed shooting with him, and had even become something of a sharpshooter herself, he assumed that a bit of technical talk of firearms and shooting might brighten her mood. Instead, the girl remained silent and simply looked out the window.
Suddenly, she turned toward Snook.
“Damn you!” she spit at him. “I’ll kill your wife and your baby!”
“Now,” Snook started to say, trying to calm her.
“I’ll kill you, too!”
The Columbus Division of Police Ordnance Section now uses the shooting range.
The expression in Theora’s eyes told Snook that she might be serious. After all, she had been acting strangely and unpredictable lately. Snook watched as Theora turned to her right and picked up her purse. She opened the clasp, and he immediately thought of the Derringer he gave her some time ago and which he had seen in her purse before. Snook thought she was going for the gun.
Theora reached for the door handle, and without thinking, Snook reached out his right hand and grabbed a ball-peen hammer he kept in a toolbox on the back shelf of the coupe. He raised it and hit Theora on the back of her head with the side of the hammer. She reeled from the blow but continued to try to get out of the car with her purse.
“Damn you,” she cried as he struck her again, this time on the forehead with the hammer. He meant the blows to stun her, but they did not seem to have any effect.
Theora managed to get the door open and stepped from the car. Snook slid across the seat and followed her. The angry woman tried to slam the door on Snook, but her own hand was in the way, and she only succeeded in injuring herself. Theora staggered back a few feet and reached into her purse with her injured hand, drawing forth a handkerchief as Snook slid out of the car.
Freed from the confines of the tiny coupe, Snook extended his arm and brought the hammer down on Theora’s head with a crushing blow. She fell to the ground.
“Damn you.” This time it came out as almost a moan, and then Theora slipped into unconsciousness.
Snook found himself sitting on the passenger-side running board of his car looking at the inert form of his lover. She was still alive but was in obvious distress and not likely to survive much longer. He did not want to see her suffer, so he stood up, walked over to her, took out his two-blade pocketknife and calmly sliced Theora’s jugular vein and carotid artery. It was a clean cut, one any surgeon would be proud of.
In shock himself, but glad to be alive, Snook picked up Theora’s purse and threw it into the car. He looked inside for the Derringer and was horrified when he learned it was not there. Theora could not have killed him after all. He did not notice that the key ring that Theora had opened not an hour before had fallen from her purse and that the remaining keys were scattered amid the weeds.
It was shortly before 9:30 p.m., and he was afraid that someone might come along and find him, so he ran around to the driver’s side and jumped in. The Ford roared to life, and he sped away, leaving Theora’s dying body behind. Somewhere along the way, he realized that he still had her purse, and he tossed it over a bridge into the Scioto River as he headed home.
The drive to his Tenth Avenue home was a blur, but he noticed it was about 11:00 p.m. when he walked into the dark house. He hastily washed the blood from the knife and hammer and went into the kitchen, browned some hamburger and tried to make a sandwich.
“Is that you?” Helen called from the upstairs.
He said nothing, and Helen came down the steps in her nightgown. The kitchen was dark, and she did not notice the blood on his suit. Snook ate his sandwich in silence and then went to his room, where he began packing for his upcoming trip. Then he lay in bed and tried to sleep without success.
On Friday morning, he took his suit and some other clothes to the dry cleaner and dropped his car off with Walker, the veterinary school custodian, with whom he had an arrangement to have the vehicle washed. Walker noted that the coupe was quite dirty, as the rain the previous night had turned the accumulated road dust to mud.
Once the car was cleaned, Snook headed to the Hubbard Avenue apartment and cleaned out the few items remaining there. He was in such a rush that he left one of Theora’s hats behind. He bid farewell to Mrs. Smalley and hoped he had covered his tracks well enough. Then he went to the university and dropped off some of the items from the apartment in his office before returning home and lighting the fire in the incinerator.
Dr. and Mrs. Snook read in the Friday Evening Dispatch of the discovery of the body of a murdered young woman, but the story did not prompt any conversation between the husband and wife until the Citizen published the victim’s name that Saturday morning. Snook mentioned to his wife that he knew Theora Hix because she worked in the steno pool in his department.
The professor had just mentioned how tragic the murder was when someone knocked at his front door. It was a detective and a reporter from the Columbus Citizen.