Murder Most Foul!
The Tragic Case of Milton
August 29, 2017-It has been far too long since I have posted on the site and I come to you today with a story that is a little outside of the norm for The Hall Ball. But, it is a story so bizarre, so coincidentally surreal, that I could not wait to sit down and tell it.
The good news is that the reason I have been so lax at posting here is because I have been extraordinarily busy working on the final stages of the project. Once again I went to Induction Weekend, where I was able to photograph the four members of this year’s class that I still needed: Iván Rodríguez, John Schuerholz, Bud Selig and Jeff Bagwell. I had been able to shoot Tim Raines a few months prior. I also made a connection in Cooperstown that ultimately got me the photo of Henry Aaron (a story for another day). Only eight living members remain for the project to be complete. They are: George Brett, Ken Griffey Jr., Doug Harvey, Sandy Koufax, Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan.
The biggest reason that I haven’t been publishing on the site is because I have been dedicating writing hours to finishing the book that tells the story of the project. On August 3, while sitting in the Bart Giamatti Research Center at the Hall of Fame, I completed the first draft. To be 100% clear, the book won’t actually be FINISHED until the project is complete. There is still one more chapter left to write, after I get those final eight guys. Oh, and I still need a publisher (details). It will be a while until you can go to your local library and pick up a copy. Completing the first draft was an accomplishment in itself, however, and I am optimistic that it will ultimately find its way to bookstore shelves.
One of the most exciting parts of finishing The Hall Ball book is that now I can start exploring other ideas. Since I started writing the book, I have had literally dozens of inspirations about the next baseball tome I want to write. A biography on Sol White. A look at all of the female owners in baseball history. An exploration into the history of the game in New York State (not just the City), from the pre-professional days to the present. These are just a few. I have many more, including one that is particularly exciting to me and may just be the winner. I’m going to keep that one under my hat for the moment, though.
As part of my ongoing research for potential ideas, I have been listening to recordings of radio broadcasts of games from yesteryear. There is an extensive catalog of games dating as far back as the 1930s that are available online from various sources. The bulk of those recordings come from The Miley Collection. As a boy in Evansville, Indiana, John Miley was given a reel-to-reel recorder by his parents. He started using it in 1947 to record baseball games. Since then he has amassed the definitive collection of game recordings, which is now housed at the Library of Congress.
Miley didn’t only record games himself, but he also collected games that were recorded by other people. One of those individuals was a gentleman by the name of Pat Rispole. Rispole was from Schenectady, NY and he recorded thousands of games broadcast on WOKO from the late 1950s until the late 1970s. It was one of those recordings that I was listening to last night when I heard something that stopped my heart. One moment I was listening to Phil Rizzuto talk about the players gathering at the top step to honor the ten-year anniversary of the death of Babe Ruth, and the next I heard something that made my blood run cold. I have edited the recording to just play the relevant parts and posted it below. Before you listen there is one important piece of background information. I grew up near Albany, NY, about a half an hour away from Rispole in Schenectady. My branch of the Carhart tree first settled in the area in the mid-1700s and many of them never left. Armed with that knowledge, give it a listen.
I listened to the recording over and over again. At first I thought I had misheard. But, there was no mistake. Smack dab in the middle of the August 16, 1958 broadcast of a contest between the Yankees and the Red Sox, a game that featured Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams, there was a program interruption announcing a murder/suicide perpetrated by a Mr. Carhart. Within seconds I was on Newspapers.com.
At first I couldn’t find anything. Searches for Carhart at the Albany address mentioned in the broadcast brought up nothing. Other searches from those dates for the keywords “Carhart,” “estranged” and “murder” were equally unsuccessful. Then, I looked up only the name and the general date of August 1958. I sifted through multiple advertisements. The Carhart name was a popular one in manufacturing at the time, a legacy that exists today in the famous rugged clothing line that added the extra “t” just to make their business stand out from the other Carhart industries.
It was in the August 18 edition of the Kingston Daily Freeman where I finally got the whole story. I also found the same article in papers from Binghamton, Wellsville, Amsterdam and Canandaigua but not, interestingly, in any of the Albany publications. Here it is:
The twisted version of the story that was broadcast on WOKO was clearly breaking news with little fact-checking. Either the press or the police spoke to the surviving children in the immediate aftermath, assumed that they belonged to Radley and that their name, Carhart, was also his. There could be any number of reasons as to why Milton was living with Catherine Radley. Later reports stated she was his live-in maid, which would have made for quite the unusual arrangement. The most titillating version is, of course, that they were lovers. Considering that the Radleys had only been separated for two months, the cohabitation would have made it likely they had been before she even left her husband.
I have not been able to confirm Milton in the family tree, although he is certainly a relation. There is one I can locate, Milton E., who was born in 1915 making him approximately the same age as the Radleys. However, he was born in New Jersey so it will take a little more digging to confirm this is the same man. If it is him, he is a seventh cousin, twice-removed. Not a close relation to be sure.
One final, coincidental bit of weirdness. When I was ten-years old I kissed a girl for the first time. We were playing hide-and-seek behind my house and we had both chosen a spot near the raspberry bushes. We took that opportunity to express our blossoming crush and awkwardly smashed lips together. She was a foster child who was staying with the family across the street, so her history was a bit of a mystery to me. I never wanted to ask any upsetting questions. As a result, I never learned the story of her biological family. Her name, however, was Cher Radley.
It is not often that a person hears their own name, especially one as relatively unusual as mine, attached to such a horrific tale. I consider the fact that I heard it while listening to a baseball game (of all things) from six decades ago as another one of those signposts that I have discovered in the last seven years.
I just hope the next sign isn’t quite so macabre.