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| Kodanko, John 1964 WI | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: May 29 2016, 09:39 PM (278 Views) | |
| Ell | May 29 2016, 09:39 PM Post #1 |
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Heart of Gold
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John Kodanko, who disappeared in August 1964. A photo of John Kodanko said to have been taken around A photo of John Kodanko said to have been taken around 1957. (Photo: Submitted) The Door County Advocate profiled the mystery surrounding Kodanko’s disappearance, including the loss of the Sheriff’s Department’s case file, earlier this month. Read part I: The mystery for John Kodanko “Pending new information I don’t think we’d consider it open, simply because we don’t have the file,” McCarty said. If new information becomes the case would be reopened, he said. Do you have information about John Kodanko’s 1964 disappearance? Contact Door County Sheriff's Lt. Bob Lauder at 920-746-2595. http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/story/...-case/85034214/ |
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Ell Only after the last tree has been cut down; Only after the last fish has been caught; Only after the last river has been poisoned; Only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten. | |
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| Ell | May 29 2016, 09:50 PM Post #2 |
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Heart of Gold
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An elderly Liberty Grove man – known as much for his dancing as his drinking and gambling – left a northern Door County tavern alone 52 years ago in his 1949 Ford and drove off into the night, never to be seen again. News reports at that time described John Kodanko, 82, as being 5 feet 6 inches tall, about 135 pounds and with gray hair. He was last seen sometime between Saturday, Aug. 8, 1964, and 2 a.m. Sunday, Aug. 9, 1964. Kodanko left behind a wife and six adult children. More than 50 years later, his mysterious disappearance has slipped into local lore. An undated photo of John Kodanko later in life. An undated photo of John Kodanko later in life. (Photo: Submitted by the Kodanko family.) Due to the time that has passed since Kodanko’s disappearance, all that remains of the original investigation are several news articles, secondhand stories and firsthand recollections. The Door County Advocate’s investigation into what happened to Kodanko began last August, when Maryann Kodanko, the wife of Kodanko’s great-nephew Matt, commented on an online story about Door County’s two missing person cases, Carol Jean Pierce and John H. Kariger. Maryann pointed out there was a third missing person in the county. From there Matt Kodanko helped the Advocate get in touch with family members and gather historical photos and news stories. Matt Kodanko took the Door County Advocate for a walk Matt Kodanko took the Door County Advocate for a walk into the area around Mud Lake Wildlife Area in Baileys Harbor in October. Kodanko wanted to show the newspaper the environment searchers faced while they looked for his great-uncle John Kodanko. (Photo: Samantha Hernandez/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin) The Advocate conducted dozens of interviews with people who took part in the search for Kodanko, searchers’ children, and Kodanko family members. The file for the original 1964 investigation conducted by then-Sheriff Hollis Bridenhagen no longer exists. Bridenhagen died while still in office in 1982. There have been a number of different record purges over the years and our records simply don’t go back that far,” Door County Chief Deputy Pat McCarty said. The records only go back to about the mid-seventies. The last record purge happened when the Sheriff’s Department moved into the Justice Center in 2006. McCarty had not heard about Kodanko’s disappearance until the Advocate approached him looking for the case file. A search of the Advocate’s archives showed only a handful of stories between the time Kodanko disappeared in August and what appears to be the final search in November of that year. Additional news stories written by the Green Bay Press-Gazette were supplied by the family. The dancer John Kodanko was born in Austria May 9, 1882, and came to the United States with his family as a young boy. The Kodanko family, which had a total of 10 children, eventually settled in Door County. According to Kodanko’s nephew, Karl Kodanko, 74, there were six girls and four boys in the family. The only two boys who married were Kodanko and Karl Kodanko’s father, Charles. At the time of his disappearance, he lived at 9530 Townline Drive with his wife, Ethel; son Freddie and brother Frank. According to Susan Armour, assistant curator at the Sister Bay Historical Society, Kodanko and his brother Rudolph Kodanko applied for U.S. citizenship in 1917. Military registration cards filled out by the brothers on Sept. 12, 1918, show them as being naturalized citizens at that time. Kodanko’s only living child, Joanne Wehling, describes her father as a hardworking farmer, a violin player and “kind of quiet.” The soft spoken Wehling, the youngest of the six children, was not close to her father. A dancer, he taught Wehling how to waltz. Unfortunately, Kodanko also drank. “He was fine when we were living in (Peninsula State Park),” Wehling said. The family lived on a 120-acre farm on what today is called Kodanko Field on Middle Road. Kodanko started drinking at the tavern in Peninsula State Park. He began gambling once slot machines were put in. An undated Kodanko family photo. An undated Kodanko family photo. (Photo: Heidi Hodges for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin) John Kodanko’s only son, Freddie Kodanko – the self-proclaimed Polka King – spoke to a few reporters during his lifetime about his father’s disappearance. Freddie Kodanko died in 2002. A July 8, 2000, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel column, “Door County Polka King Unleashes the music inside” by Jim Stingl, briefly mentions Freddie’s father toward the end. Freddie talks a lot about his father, a violin player who also loved to dance until one night in the early 1960s when he died under mysterious circumstances. He disappeared after flashing a wad of money in a bar. His car turned up but not his body. After that, Freddie lived with his mother until her death about 20 years ago.” Freddie Kodanko also spoke about his father’s disappearance to Norbert Blei for a July 13, 1978, Advocate article, “Freddie, another Door original.” This Norbert Blei photo of Freddie Kodanko accompanied This Norbert Blei photo of Freddie Kodanko accompanied his July 13, 1978, Advocate article, “Freddie, another Door original.” (Photo: File/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin) “My dad was a dancer. I inherited dancing. It was an inheritance from him. He did it different than I did. He did jigs. I do ballet and a little jig … Oh you should have seen my dad dance. He’d put his heel right up on the table!" Toward the end of Blei's article, Freddie talks about his father’s disappearance My dad,” he says, his eyes starting to water up, “He got lost. We had a manhunt for him … nobody knows. He got lost in the swamp … Nobody knows if he got lost or somebody took him away … I just inherited dance from him.” What Freddie Kodanko told Stingl and Blei makes up the basics of the most widely told story of Kodanko’s disappearance: He was at a bar, he may have flashed some money, and the body was never found. It is not definitively known which tavern Kodanko was in the last night of his life. During this months-long investigation, the Advocate did not find anyone who had seen Kodanko on either Saturday or Sunday. Retracing steps “Search for missing man to continue on Saturday” story in the Aug. 13, 1964, edition of the Advocate gives an idea of where Kodanko may have been driving from. “Sheriff (Hollis) Bridenhagen said that Kodanko was last seen at 2 a.m. Sunday leaving Sister Bay alone in his car.” The two bars Kodanko may have visited that last night have been identified through interviews as AC Tap, 9322 Wisconsin 57, Baileys Harbor, or Earl’s Sister Bay Bowl, 10640 N. Bay Shore Drive, Sister Bay. He was also a regular at Emma Husby’s Cherry Land Restaurant (now known as Husby’s) in Sister Bay and The Rock (now Alexander’s) in Fish Creek. Wehling was told he was last at Earl’s, where he did most of his gambling. She also believes he did take to carrying larger sums of money later in life. “Well, he didn’t at first, but then he got to gambling,” she said. “I think, as far as I heard, he did make some money. He always drank when he was playing cards.” Dennis Bhirdo, 78, recounted a story where Kodanko received a large check in the mail. The two used to play cards together. “One time when he got a check in the mail and took it down to the Sister Bay Bowl where Earl Willems was tending bar,” Dennis Bhirdo said. Kodanko cashed the check and Willems gave him $600. Later the bartender realized the check was for $6,000 and jumped in his car and took it back to Kodanko. Bhirdo was about 27 and living in Illinois when Kodanko disappeared. Missing There is no known record of when or who reported Kodanko missing. Several people told the Advocate Kodanko's disappearance was not reported right away. It is unknown who finally let authorities know he was missing. “There was a time lapse there” of a couple of days, said Kodanko’s nephew Paul Kodanko. Paul Kodanko was 18 at the time. This is the same story Chad Kodanko, Karl Kodanko’s son and Charles and Hertha Kodanko’s grandson, was told. Paul Kodanko is also Charles and Hertha’s son and Matt's father. It was not uncommon for Kodanko to go missing for a day or two, Chad Kodanko had been told by his grandmother. My grandmother did say his wife … had waited at least three days before she called authorities,” he said. The first mention of the initial search in the Tuesday, Aug. 11, 1964, Advocate article “Search for Missing man.” At the time the newspaper came out on Tuesdays and Thursdays. “County law enforcement authorities and volunteers were conducting an extensive search in northern Door County today for John Kodanko, 82, missing from his farm home since Saturday night.” The story goes on to state his car was found abandoned in a field. Karl Kodanko described it as a hay field. The car was found in a field northeast of the AC Tap today. Carl Becker told the Advocate this afternoon that the car had been found but that searchers were still looking for the missing man.” A Green Bay Press-Gazette article titled “Door County Missing Man Hunt Resumes” from the time of the disappearance states Kodanko was last seen "wearing a dark suit coat, dark trousers and white cap.” An Aug. 13, 1964, edition of the Advocate article “Search for missing man to continue on Saturday” offers more details about the car. “The car, a 1949 Ford, was found abandoned after it was hung upon a stone fence on the Odella Prust farm in Liberty Grove. The sheriff spotted the car from a plane.” Prust’s niece Dolores Spittlemeister, who served as her legal guardian for 13 years, placed her aunt’s farm at 2338 Grove Road and confirmed the spelling of her name as “Adella.” Also in this area is the Mud Lake State Wildlife Area. The call Wehling, 88, was living in Colorado with her husband, Harry Wehling, and their two children when she received the call her father was missing. “I imagine it was probably my sister that called,” Wehling said. After all this time she is not sure whether it was her sister Laura Tesnow of Ellison Bay or Katherine Hanson of Neenah. Wehling's two other sisters were Margaret Potts and Marian Bredeson. “They said not to come back because there was nothing I could do anyway and I had the two little ones,” she said. What happened to Kodanko is a mystery, but many still remember the search for him. In the second half of this story, we hear from eyewitnesses and accounts of the time about that search. On a Sunday morning in October, Matt Kodanko climbed into a car at the AC Tap in Baileys Harbor for the short drive to the end of Grove Road, the same tree-lined road where his great-uncle John disappeared in 1964. The car passed old hayfields now overtaken with new construction, trees and juniper bushes. The goal that day was to walk into the very Mud Lake Wildlife Area where John Kodanko of Liberty Grove may have disappeared. Read part I: The mystery of John Kodanko Matt Kodanko talked about the landscape as he bent back branches and climbed over logs. He also spoke about how easy it would be to get turned around out there, even in the short 200-yard walk into the woods. The reason for the walk was to show the Door County Advocate what searchers were facing 52 years ago. Kodanko, 82, disappeared sometime between late Saturday, Aug. 8, 1964, and early Aug. 9, 1964. All information about the original Kodanko investigation was lost in a records purge when the Door County Sheriff’s Department moved buildings more than a decade ago. The morning walk into the wildlife area was sunny, warm and the ground dry. Matt Kodanko had a different description for the area: He called it a “vile, dark, dank quagmire of filth.” Some of the people who took part in the search 52 years ago used a different word: wild. Articles from the Advocate and the Green Bay Press-Gazette give details of the search. A two-paragraph brief in the Tuesday, Aug. 11, 1964, edition of the Advocate is the first mention of the search for Kodanko: Search for missing man "County law enforcement authorities and volunteers were conducting an extensive search in northern Door County today for John Kodanko, 82, missing from his farm home since Saturday night. His car was found abandoned in a field. "Kodanko lives between Baileys Harbor and Sister Bay and reportedly drove off in his car Saturday night and failed to return. The car was found in a field northeast of the AC Tap today. Carl Becker told the Advocate this afternoon that the car had been found but that searchers were still looking for the missing man.” Many place Kodanko’s last known location at the AC Tap, 9322 Wisconsin 57, Baileys Harbor. Kodanko’s daughter Joanne Wehling, 88, said she believes he may have been at Earl’s Sister Bay Bowl, 10640 N. Bay Shore Drive in Sister Bay, because it was where he frequently played cards. Kodanko’s son, Freddie Kodanko – the self-proclaimed Polka King – told the story of his father’s disappearance to various reporters over the years. Each time he mentioned how his father may have flashed a wad of money on the night he disappeared. The next mention of Kodanko’s disappearance is the Aug. 13, 1964, edition of the Advocate, “Search for missing man to continue on Saturday.” Then-Door County Sheriff Hollis Bridenhagen asked volunteers to meet at the AC Tap Saturday, Aug. 15. Those taking part were advised to “wear footwear for wet ground.” “Sheriff Bridenhagen said that Kodanko was last seen at 2 a.m. Sunday leaving Sister Bay alone in his car. The car, a 1949 Ford, was found abandoned after it was hung upon a stone fence on the Odella Prust farm in Liberty Grove. The sheriff spotted the car from a plane.” Adella Prust’s name was misspelled in those Advocate stories. The car In an interview, Wehling said the family kept the Ford at its 9530 Townline Drive property for years after it was recovered. “The car wasn’t in too bad of condition, because my mother had it when we moved back here. It was up in the barn,” she said. Wehling and her husband, Harry, moved to Door County from Colorado a year after her father’s disappearance. The car was eventually given to a now unknown person. The car going through Adella Prust’s property caused damage before it hit the stone fence. According to Adella Prust’s nephew, Herbert Prust, besides a stone fence around the hay fields, there were also barbed-wire fences in some places. Herbert Prust, 79, recalls his aunt told someone about seeing headlights the night Kodanko disappeared. “That was all she said about the car and John Kodanko,” he said. Herbert Prust, who was about 27 years old, remembers seeing the sheriff and searchers on the property. “There were tracks and skid marks, and his car was still there,” Herbert Prust said. The car was on the northeast corner of Adella Prust’s fields. It looked like two cars had been racing, he said. Kodanko would have had to come up the driveway and go alongside the house to get between the barn and the corn crib before entering the hayfield, he said. Herbert Prust is not the only one to remember the tire tracks. “I remember when I went down there where the tracks were where the car was on the property … He was driving around in circles in a farm field,” said Kodanko’s nephew Karl Kodanko. Karl Kodanko was about 23 at the time and had recently returned from serving in the Army. He did not take part in the search, but his brother Paul Kodanko did. The search Paul Kodanko remembers his father, Charles, returned from working out of town to help with the search. Matt Kodanko is Paul Kodanko’s son. Paul Kodanko recalls Grove Road, then a shorter gravel road, was lined with cars. The search began in the field near the car and stretched into Mud Lake. Two aerial shots provided by the Door County Soil and Two aerial shots provided by the Door County Soil and Water Conservation office shows the Mud Lake State Wildlife Area as it appeared in the 1960s. Door County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Pat McCarty matched the images up and labeled various landmarks. (Photo: Courtesy Door County) “They started walking in a line and people started separating, and in that area it was hard to stay close together,” Paul Kodanko said. Even though it was August, there was water and mud holes in the area approaching Mud Lake. According to Joshua Martinez, wildlife biologist for the Department of Natural Resources, the Mud Lake Wildlife Area was created in 1966 after the DNR purchased 1,040 acres. Today the wildlife area covers 2,754.59 acres Martinez described Mud Lake as a cedar swamp where parts of it had been logged but not developed. “Vegetation wise, the forest structure is very thick there,” he said. Besides the lake, there are also small ponds and stumps throughout. “To walk through that whole property would be difficult,” Martinez said. “I remember it to be a nasty place to try and look for somebody,” Paul Kodanko said. Archived information from the National Weather Service’s Weather Forecast Office lists the conditions in which Kodanko went missing as unseasonably cool. “The evening of Aug. 8 and the morning hours of Aug. 9 were very cool for early August with temperatures in the 40s to around 50,” wrote Roy Eckberg, Weather Forecast Office Green Bay Climate Program leader, in an email to the Advocate. “The low was 42 on the 9th at Sturgeon Bay with no rain for the previous five days. The high that afternoon only reached 66.” According to the Aug. 13 story, Bridenhagen tried several different ways to locate Kodanko. A two-day search during which bloodhounds were flown in from Marinette failed to produce any clue to the whereabouts of Kodanko, the sheriff said. Although Kodanko was a woodsman and the sheriff did not rule out the possibility of foul play, he said it was probable he (Kodanko) became lost in the wooded area described as 'real wilderness.'" Bloodhounds According to Green Bay Press-Gazette stories about the Aug. 11-12 search, the bloodhounds were kept in Niagara and owned by the Wisconsin-Michigan Rescue organization. The dogs were flown from Marinette in an Ansul Chemical Co. plane. The Press-Gazette’s “Door County Missing Man Hunt Resumes” gives an indication on how the search went. “Sheriff Bridenhagen said the bloodhounds indicated Kodanko moved in a northeastern direction from his car, but that they then lost the scent,” the story said. For many who remember the search, the dogs especially stood out. Dennis Koepsel remembers his father, Eldred Koepsel, taking him and his older brother to see the dogs being released. Koepsel was about 7 years old. The Kodanko family lived about a 1½ miles from where he grew up, Koepsel said. He believes the searchers used some kind of scent to get the dogs started. “They did not find anything with those dogs,” he said. Koepsel thinks Eldred Koepsel took his sons down to the search site because “it was something unique or different.” A front page story on Aug. 18 Advocate announced the search for Kodanko had ended: “An extensive search Saturday failed to solve the disappearance of John Kodanko, 82, but it did uncover a safe stolen from the Boettcher Garage in Baileys Harbor 14 years ago. "Sheriff Hollis Bridenhagen who organized and conducted the search, said the only clue to Kondanko, found by the searching party was a handkerchief found approximately a fourth-mile southeast from where Kodanko’s car had been found earlier.” About 115 volunteers from as far away as West De Pere took part, that story states: “Bridenhagen said he will try again in November after the foliage from the wooded area is gone." The sheriff again weighs in on what might have happened to Kodanko. “Although he will not rule out the possibility of foul play, the sheriff is inclined to believe Kodanko wandered into the wilderness and became lost. "Bloodhounds used in the initial search also failed to uncover any trace of the missing man. According to the sheriff, the owners of the bloodhounds described the area as 'wild as any we’ve ever been in.' "Bridenhagen said Joe Parent and a companion came across the safe hoisted from the Boettcher garage in 1950. The safe was found in the swamp off of County Trunk Q, its door blown off and the contents gone.” What appears to be the last mention of an organized search for Kodanko appeared in the Nov. 5, 1964, Advocate article “Sheriff seeks search party.” Bridenhagen asked for volunteers to come the AC Tap at 8 a.m. Nov. 7. Not forgotten A search of Door County death certificates did not turn up any sign of Kodanko’s death being recorded by the county. He is listed on the Federal Death Index as having died in August 1964. Bridenhagen spoke about Kodanko over the years, said Garey Bies, a former member of the Sheriff’s Department. Bridenhagen died in 1982. Bies was not on the force when Kodanko vanished. A photo of John Kodanko said to have been taken around A photo of John Kodanko said to have been taken around 1957. (Photo: Submitted) “We talked about it a number of times. He always wondered what happened to him. I guess one of the theories was he was maybe taken advantage by some unscrupulous people,” Bies said. More specifically, Kodanko "ran afoul” of a group of Native American migrant workers, Bies had been told. He had also been informed the missing man had received a paycheck and was in a tavern with the money. “One of the theories was he was taken into the Mud Lake swamp and disposed of,” he said. Another theory is the body was moved out of the county. Rehashing the cold case was part of discussions about unsolved cases in general, Bies said. Those conversations often took place at shift change. “I don’t recall any credible information ever coming up after that,” he said of the initial investigation. Daughter still wants answers Wehling lives in a home next door to her parents’ old home and only a few miles from where her father disappeared. “It’s funny they never found him because if he wandered off from the car, they should have found something,” she said. Even after all this time Wehling would like an answer to her father’s disappearance. It’s hard not knowing, she said. Do you have information about John Kodanko’s 1964 disappearance? Contact Door County Sheriff's Lt. Bob Lauder at 920-746-2595. http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/story/...danko/84254990/ |
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Ell Only after the last tree has been cut down; Only after the last fish has been caught; Only after the last river has been poisoned; Only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten. | |
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