It was Monday February 28th, 1927- not too long past noon.
Ernest Frederick, 42, had gone into the post office at the corner of Market and Pine to mail a letter.
As he started to leave, Walter I. Holcomb, 55, entered the building.
Ernest supposedly greeted him with a “Hello Walter” before drawing two revolvers and firing.
Walter started to run after being hit by the first shot but fell on his front. Ernest stood over the body and fired the remaining of the 10 rounds into his head (later articles said 8: three in the chest, five in the head).
The crowd that gathered around the body was so thick that people couldn’t move.
Ernest said that he had planned on confronting Walter about an affair, but was only armed because he knew that Walter carried a gun (Ernest was a respected gunsmith – in fact, that’s how he had met Walter – working on his guns). He claimed that when he greeted Walter, Walter reached into his coat as if going for his gun.
An onlooker denied that Walter had reached into his coat.
Frederick didn’t say much to the police except that Walter had been having an affair with his wife for a long time. “It sent me to a sanitarium with a nervous breakdown, and I have been home but two weeks.” Previously, he had been employed at Trumbull Steel.
“I have shot off the third end of a triangle and sent a soul to hell that was long past due.”
He ended up in Federal Court in Cleveland – the first murder charge in around 25 years.
He wasn’t sentenced to death by hanging, instead, it was life in prison. The suggestion in the newspaper was that the court must have thought that there was some legitimacy to the claim of a longstanding affair to have not reached the sentence of hanging.