Mystery caller triggers another look at Sternbaum murder case, 70 years later

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first in a four-part series. Part II will publish on Feb. 27. Part III will publish on Feb. 28 and Part IV will finish the series on Feb. 29.

MANSFIELD — Several years ago Richland Source city editor Carl Hunnell called Lexington attorney Bob Whitney for a retrospective piece.

“Bob, I’m calling about the most famous murder trial in the history of Richland County,” Carl said.

“The Sternbaum case?” Whitney responded.

“No. The Boyle case,” Carl said, referencing the 1990 murder trial of Dr. John Boyle.

“No,” said Whitney, who was Boyle’s defense attorney. “Sternbaum.”

The Sternbaum murder case resonated in the community like no other. In its 15-month span from the midnight murder on Dec. 4, 1952 to its jury verdict on March, 4, 1954, the Mansfield News Journal covered it in unprecedented fashion, including verbatim testimony on some days.

In 2007, as Local Editor at the News Journal, I turned a story on the top court cases covered by the newspaper in its 75-year history. Obviously, Sternbaum was at or near the top of the list.

It was fascinating, but it drew me in even more thanks to an astonishing phone call.

We’ll get to that.

Technically, this could be considered a cold-case homicide, although there are many who believe the killer was well-known and simply got away with a capital crime.

It was a devastating story that robbed three very small boys of their mother. It included violence, betrayal, marital strife, sex, and in the end, murder. To this day it would be a compelling noir film.

What made it even more intriguing to the Mansfield community was the family in the crosshairs of this narrative.

According to the Columbus Jewish Historical Society, Carl Sternbaum (born Nov. 17, 1888) and Mary Yuwiler (born Feb. 14, 1888) were married before immigrating in 1914 from Warsaw, Poland to Detroit.

The family arrived in Mansfield in 1917 and immediately wove itself into the fabric of the community.

In fact, it was Carl Sternbaum who donated land for the Friendly House to be built. It was a gesture made in honor of his youngest child, Lt. Jacob Sternbaum, who was killed in 1944 while flying a mission over northern India during World War II.

The family was beloved throughout the city, and that included oldest sons Phillip (David) and Ernest (Max), and a daughter, Helen (Minnie).

Their business, Sternbaum’s Complete Food Marts, grew out of a tiny store on the first floor of a two-story building at 169 Vale Ave., with the family living upstairs.

Years later the rear of the building became a storage area and office. This was the site of the infamous murder.

In its heyday, Sternbaum’s Complete Food Marts employed 250 people and had multiple locations in Mansfield, as well as stores in Ashland, Willard and Fremont. Yet another shop opened in Bucyrus in 1953.

In 1952, Carl Sternbaum was semi-retired and his sons were running the business. David and Max were both executives in the company, with David serving as vice-president and 33-year-old Max employed as its treasurer.

They were hard-working individuals and well-liked by their neighbors.

Then came Dec. 4, 1952.

Max’s story, which never wavered, was that he was working at his desk just after midnight when two men quietly entered the rear of the business office without his notice. One of them shoved a gun in his back and demanded cash and his watch.

Suddenly, the other man yelled from the rear of the office, “Someone’s coming.” Max was belted over the head and when he awoke, his office was filled with smoke and flames.

He crawled out with a head wound and blood on his clothes. But his wife, 31-year-old Leah, who had come to pick him up, was dead inside. While her body suffered severe burns in the blaze, the coroner quickly determined she had died from multiple skull fractures.

Authorities appeared baffled at first. They questioned a number of potential suspects and traveled out of state to follow numerous leads.

But a year and a day after the crime, Max was charged with first-degree murder and arson.

The death-penalty case was quickly dubbed Ohio’s Trial of the Century. That title was short-lived though. The Sam Sheppard murder case erupted in Bay Village just a few months later when Marilyn Sheppard was murdered on July 4, 1954.

The Sternbaum trial took a little more than three weeks, and was one of the longest in Ohio history at the time. It drew a packed courtroom and triggered blaring headlines every day in the News Journal.

The case featured lurid, sensational testimony, receipts of lavish gifts purchased for a “Mystery Woman,” and a big black monkey wrench that was declared the murder weapon.

This scenario unfolded before a captivated audience that ripped the door to the courtroom off its hinges one day in a furious dash to get a spot in the 67-seat venue.

When the proceedings concluded, Max was found not guilty — just a day after his father died of a stroke.

That’s the guts of what my piece at the News Journal covered — and then things got even more mysterious.

The News Journal published the story on Dec. 19, 2007, and a few days later, I was sitting at my desk when the office phone rang.

Remember, this was in the early era of the internet. The story went up on the News Journal’s website (which was free at the time) and anyone, virtually anywhere, could read it.

Someone did.

The conversation went something like this:

“Hi, I’d like to talk to Larry Phillips,” what sounded like a young female stated on the other end of the line.

“You’re talking to him,” I said breezily, amid the din of a typically busy news day.

“Well, I just read your story about the Max Sternbaum case,” she said.

“Yeah, that was something,” I interjected. “I’ve lived here a while and I had never even heard of it.”

“Well,” she said with a dramatic pause. “That’s my grandfather, and I didn’t know anything about any of this.”

I was stunned. So was she. It was like talking to a person in shock, probably on both ends of the phone line.

Somewhere in this very short conversation she said she lived in Florida. My phone was of the touch-tone variety, and there was no caller ID.

“Wow. I’d really like to talk to you more about this,” I said, clearly unable to conceal my zeal and frantically scrambling for a pen and notepad.

“I think our readers would be very interested in what happened to your grandfather after the trial.”

My audible excitement probably spooked her. She wouldn’t give me her name nor her phone number when I pressed for further information.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I want to talk to my mom first.”

“I understand that,” I said. “But please give me a call after you do.”

Much as I feared, she never called again.

To this day, I don’t know if the caller really was Max’s granddaughter or not. She sure sounded genuine. Who would make up such a thing?

A search of Ancestry.com also reveals Max did indeed relocate to Miami to live out the remainder of his days.

Anyway, ever since that one-minute phone call, I’ve felt a bit of a connection to the case.

This week, on the 70th anniversary of the trial, we’re going to take a closer look at the murder of Leah Sternbaum, and the trial of her husband, Max.

The case drew nationwide attention, and had a grip on Mansfield and the surrounding communities that served as locations for Sternbaum’s Complete Food Mart stores. It was shocking stuff for all of north central Ohio.

Last month, I spent a week at the Sherman Room of the Mansfield Richland County Public Library to study the case.

For those who have never heard the story, it will be tough to forget it once you’ve read it.