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Looking Back 1941

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A Local Arrest Leads to National Death Penalty Case

by James Rada, Jr.

An arrest in Thurmont in 1949 was the first domino to tip in Merlin James Leiby’s life that led to him being executed for murder in Florida a few years later in a case that drew national coverage.

Leiby was like a cat with nine lives. Despite a long record of run-ins with the law, nothing seemed to stick. He escaped without consequences. However, eventually, a cat’s lives run out, and so did Leiby’s.

After a series of robberies at O’Toole’s Garage in Thurmont, police arrested Leiby. The police investigation also identified the Frederick barber as the leading suspect in other robberies throughout the county. A February grand jury named him in several indictments.

He was released on bond, but then he failed to appear in circuit court in March. His bail bondsman, Glenn Crum, was required to pay the court the $1,500 bail amount (about $20,000 in today’s dollars).

Police then arrested Leiby in Florida, where he had fled after making bail. The arrest wasn’t for his outstanding warrant in Frederick County, though. He was now a suspect in the murder of a Baltimore pharmacist in Jacksonville, Florida. “The seriousness of the charge in Florida left some doubt here as to whether Leiby will ever be returned to Frederick County as a fugitive,” the Emmitsburg Chronicle reported.

Detective Inspector H. V. Branch of Jacksonville told local police that Leiby had admitted killing Leonard Applebaum, a 27-year-old Baltimore pharmacist, on the Tamiami Trail, about 72 miles from Miami. Applebaum’s body was found under a bridge over a dry creek. He had been shot six times, and news reports frequently called it his “bullet-riddled body.”

“Branch said Leiby told officers he won an automobile and a large sum of money from Applebaum in a gambling game at Tampa,” the Emmitsburg Chronicle reported. “In an argument later, the confession disclosed, Leiby said he shot Applebaum in self-defense.”

According to Leiby, he said he won $1,300 from Applebaum, who admitted he couldn’t pay because he only had $200 on him. He said he had friends in New Orleans who would help him. He asked Leiby to drive with him to the city to get the money. Leiby agreed. They started on the journey, but Applebaum stopped in the middle of nowhere, pulled a gun on Leiby, and said he would not pay. Leiby drew his own weapon and shot Applebaum.

When police stopped Leiby, police also found the murder weapon inside. Leiby later admitted that after shooting Applebaum, he drove the body from Tampa to the place where he disposed of it.

Interestingly, Leiby said that he and Applebaum hadn’t known each other in Maryland.

Applebaum was a Navy veteran who had been in Florida on vacation but had been missing from his Miami Beach hotel since March 11. Police started questioning Leiby because his girlfriend had gotten suspicious when he showed up with a lot more money than she had seen him with prior.

As an aside, Helen Leiby, Merlin Leiby’s wife, filed for divorce on the grounds of adultery while Leiby was being held on murder charges in Florida. The couple had married in Frederick in August 1948. She discovered his infidelity when the newspapers mentioned his girlfriend in Florida. She was granted her divorce in October.

In late April 1949, it appeared that Leiby still had some of his feline lives when it was announced that his trial was stalled because of “failure of officers to fix the scene of the fatal shooting,” according to the Frederick Post. This is because although Leiby admitted to the murder, he couldn’t say where along the trail it happened. It caused confusion over what court had jurisdiction over the case.

He was finally indicted on May 26.

Then, in mid-July, came the surprising news that his indictment had been thrown out on technical grounds. “Circuit Judge Lynn Gerald ruled the indictment invalid because the grand jury which returned it was drawn by a court clerk instead of a judge,” the Frederick News reported. This required a new grand jury to be empaneled.

On July 21, prosecutors in Florida used an old state law that had never been used before to allow officials in Collier County to prosecute the case. “The law permits a defendant to be tried in any county through which the transient has passed. In order to avoid conflicting constitutional provisions requiring murder cases to be tried in the county in which the crime was committed,” Washington Evening Star reported.

With both the jurisdictional and jury issues settled, the case moved forward, but the four-day trial did not happen until March 1950.

The jury took only 40 minutes to deliberate and find Leiby guilty of first-degree murder.

“The defense presented no evidence in arguing the case to the jury. [Defense Attorney] Smith asserted the State had not proved the crime was planned or that it had occurred in this (Collier) county,” the Frederick News reported.

Leiby was sentenced to die in the electric chair. It was Collier County’s first and only death penalty case.

As Leiby sat in jail awaiting execution, he filed appeal after appeal. Although none were successful, it delayed the execution. At one point, the governor of Florida considered clemency, but the Florida Parole Commission opposed it, in part, because Leiby had outstanding warrants in both Maryland and Pennsylvania.

Finally, at the end of 1951, his execution was set for some time during the second week of January 1952. The exact date was left to the prison conducting the execution.

Leiby’s luck stepped in once again, and on January 7, 1952, Gov. Fuller Warren recalled his death warrant, temporarily.

It seemed Leiby had material evidence in another case. He said he had heard two convicted rapists plotting an escape that had ended in the death of one of them and the other one wounded. The NAACP wanted the county sheriff punished because the wounded rapist was saying he had been shot without reason. The courts wanted to hear Leiby’s testimony before deciding whether action needed to be taken against the sheriff.

Finally, on June 30, 1952, Leiby was led to the electric chair. He had no final words before his luck ran out, and he was executed.

Thurmont’s Mother Clarke A Salute to One Who Loved Veterans

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Joan Bittner Fry

Few people in the history of Frederick County, Maryland, can claim to have been a mother to thousands, yet Ambrosia Elizabeth “Rose” Derwart Clarke (who shall be called Rose) could. She was born in south Baltimore on August 4, 1895. Her father owned and operated a saloon and the convenience store next door on Hull Street. If she were alive today, she would be doing one of two things: donating blood or visiting sick and wounded service members in hospitals.

It isn’t certain why she became so devoted to servicemen, but the fact that her father’s two businesses catered to the sailors docked in Baltimore may have had some influence. On Christmas Day 1916, she married Charles H. “Jerry” Clarke, Sr., a route driver for Rice’s Bakery. Rose and Jerry met on an excursion boat named “LOUISE” in Tolchester, Maryland. A painting of “LOUISE” later hung on a wall in the front living room of their home.

After their marriage, Rose often accompanied her husband on his daily rounds from Baltimore, which included Northern Frederick County. The young couple later chose to make Thurmont their home. Rose gave birth to twenty-four children, twelve of whom lived. As the years passed, Jerry bought a candy store across from O’Toole’s Garage on the Old Emmitsburg Road (at that time) and quit his job at Rice’s. The store was turned into a beer saloon and sandwich shop. Jerry bought additional land and a seventeen-room, three-story house (Altamont and 550) up the road from the restaurant-beer saloon. Eventually, the entire saloon was completely transported up the main thoroughfare of U.S. 15 (now 550) to where Mountain Jerry’s came to permanently be (Liberty Gas Station is there now.).

One would think that raising twelve children and helping a husband run a business would be exhausting, but not for Rose. Her desire to help others was boundless. At the beginning of WWII, Rose and Jerry made sandwiches daily and took them to the soldiers who stood picket duty along the road. There were so many military convoys traveling the highway that guards were needed. This simple act of kindness on their part began a lifetime of devotion to Veterans and, eventually, earned Rose the title of “Mother Clarke” to thousands.

In 1942, Rose was the first woman in Frederick County to give blood for the war effort. When she signed up for the first donation, the newspaper noted that a woman from Thurmont, who had given birth to twenty-four children, was to donate blood and wished to remain anonymous. At age sixty, her doctor ordered her to stop giving blood; but, by that time, she had given fifty-one pints, a pint every two months from 1942 to 1955. Also, in 1942, she began to visit wounded servicemen in three military hospitals. She once said, “Arthritis hasn’t stopped me. If God lets something happen to my feet, I still have my hands.” At age eighty-six, she said, “As long as God gives me health and strength, I’ll continue my work.”

For twenty years, she never had time to leave her hometown. In fact, she had never left her native state of Maryland. So, in 1947, The Thurmont Lions’ Club thought it was time for Mother Clarke to take a breather, and they provided a trip to California for her.

Jerry died in 1954, and although Rose was deeply grieved, she turned more and more of her energy towards the comfort of Veterans. When she was hospitalized in 1966 for surgery on an arthritic knee, she remarked, “When they would take me for physical therapy, there would be hundreds of our boys trying so hard to get used to their artificial arms and legs; oh, how my heart ached for them. That’s why we must keep their morale up, make their hospital stay a little more cheerful, and show them we won’t forget them.”

She was a friend to all servicemen, and during the war won their respect and admiration for the many little favors she did for them. Her home was a “home away from home” for the servicemen, contributing much to their morale. When the war ended, she continued this service, begging and borrowing to carry on this personal service for her “boys in uniform.”

She made frequent visits to numerous hospitals and sought small gifts from retailers in both Frederick and Baltimore for “her boys.” Military leaders at every medical facility in Maryland wrote to thank her, and she was a guest on several national television programs, soliciting gifts that she donated to Veteran’s hospitals. At nearly eighty years of age, she was feted at the Thurmont American Legion, where tributes came in from around the country, including from many Veterans whose lives she had touched while they were hospitalized.  She was remembered for her many acts of kindness shown to the servicemen, and as the Vietnam war grew more intense, she was kept busy visiting the hospital wards and providing the Veterans with little pleasures that only a mother would consider. Her work, which she considered a mere pleasure, won her the respect and admiration of the entire community, as well as thousands of servicemen throughout the country.

In 1983, two years had passed since she had seen any of “her boys.” That year, she received a letter from President Ronald Reagan, thanking her for thirty-eight years of devotion to servicemen. This was not her first letter from a president. She also received notes from Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Eisenhower, and was recognized by national publications such as Samaritan of the Year. She received citations from Francis Cardinal Spellman and Pope Pius XII, who also had an interest in servicemen.

None of that fame changed her personality. She was a simple country woman, proud to be Mother Clarke to men and women in uniform and preferred if she could remain anonymous. She was always a good mother to her children: Charles, Jr., Jerome, Kate, Mary, Ellie, Pat, Rose, Joe, Mike, Paul, Ronnie, and Francis (in no particular order). Their last child was born when Rose was forty-five and Jerry was sixty. Many in the community may have known one or more of them. (Special thanks to Mike for naming his siblings.)

Rose’s last public appearance was at the change of command at Fort Detrick in June 1985. She died April 22, 1987, at age ninety-one and was survived by ten of her children and forty-eight grandchildren. Her son, Paul, compiled a book entitled Memories of Mother Clarke, The Veteran’s Mother in 1985.  It may be viewed in the archives at the Thurmont Regional Library.

 

Note: Some information was excerpted from Gateway to the Mountains by George Wireman,  . . . All Our Yesterdays by John Ashbury, and The Veteran’s Mother by Paul Clarke, 1985.

Rose and Jerry Clarke.