ChatteringBirds
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That was interesting.
I wonder if search (cadaver) dogs were ever brought out to those woods.
OH OH - John Hundley & James McQueary, both 9, Fairfax, 15 Oct 1964
- Thread starter jules19osu
- Start date
That was interesting.
I wonder if search (cadaver) dogs were ever brought out to those woods.
I may be wrong but from what I've found, which unfortunately isn't much, I don't think they did.
I've done some more googling and it appears detective Mike Murphy worked on the case for decades, as stated by an article WCPO wrote, but passed away in 2017. So my hopes of discussing the case with him are no longer. Can anyone do some digging to confirm?
ChatteringBirds
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Decades? Wow. Maybe you can talk to whomever now has his files?
Missing Person -
Ohio Attorney General
James McQueary Lost, injured or missing
Missing from: Cincinnati, Ohio
James photo is shown age-progressed to 56 years old. James was with his friend John Hundley, who is also missing. They were last seen at the Frisch's Mainliner in Fairfax, Ohio.
Contact
Anyone with additional information or questions regarding this case should contact Fairfax Police Department at (513) 271-7250.
Additional Pictures
Companion
John Hundley
John's photo is shown age-progressed to 56 years.
Ohio Attorney General
James McQueary Lost, injured or missing
Missing from: Cincinnati, Ohio
- Missing since: 10/15/1964
- Missing age: 9
- Current age: 65
- Gender: Male
- Race/Ethnicity: White
- Height: 3'6"
- Weight: 65 lbs
- Hair color: Brown
- Eye color: Blue
James photo is shown age-progressed to 56 years old. James was with his friend John Hundley, who is also missing. They were last seen at the Frisch's Mainliner in Fairfax, Ohio.
Contact
Anyone with additional information or questions regarding this case should contact Fairfax Police Department at (513) 271-7250.
Additional Pictures
Companion
John Hundley
- Current age: 55
- Date of birth: 10/15/1964
- Gender: Male
- Race/Ethnicity: White
- Height: 4'0"
- Weight: 85 lbs
- Hair color: Brown
- Eye color: Brown
John's photo is shown age-progressed to 56 years.
What happened to Johnny Hundley and Jimmy McQueary?
Two Fairfax third-graders vanished in 1964
John Hundley and James McQueary, best friends as 9-year-olds living in Fairfax, disappeared in 1964.
LINK:
What happened to these boys who vanished in '64?
Two Fairfax third-graders vanished in 1964
John Hundley and James McQueary, best friends as 9-year-olds living in Fairfax, disappeared in 1964.
LINK:
What happened to these boys who vanished in '64?
ChatteringBirds
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Enhanced image from source What happened to these boys who vanished in '64?
Attachments
Here is a fairly comprehensive 2017 Article:
FAIRFAX, Ohio -- Were Johnny Hundley and Jimmy McQueary killed by the neighborhood teen who confessed to stabbing them, only to retract that confession later?...
- Were the 9-year-old best friends killed by a man who buried their bodies under a porch in Massachusetts, as his daughter claimed?...
- Were they kidnapped by someone driving a black Cadillac near the Frisch’s on Wooster Pike, as one witness reported?
- Did they die accidentally – perhaps falling into one of the many construction digs in the east-side village 53 years ago?...
... The disappearance of the Fairfax School third-graders in 1964 is the oldest cold case in Tri-Staters’ memories, and one of the most baffling. Fairfax police Det. Mike Murphy, who has worked on the case over several decades, says there have been “50 to 60 different rumors.” ...
... Hundreds of officers and volunteers young and old searched the village, combing through the high grass and brush along the Little Miami River and digging up freshly filled construction sites. The search went nationwide. Railroad workers looked through freight cars in case the boys had decided to go on an adventure. The investigation took Fairfax officers to California, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Kentucky.
Murphy, who started investigating the case in the 1970s, has his theory. So does John Hundley’s sister...
... Bonnie Hundley-Zornes still aches to know what happened to her little brother and his best friend...
... “It all ended when he walked up the street ... He had on a white T-shirt, and blue jeans and white gym shoes. He had just gotten home from school. It was about 3:30 in the afternoon,” she said.
Bonnie was 20 at the time, the oldest of four kids. Their father had died a year earlier and their mother had gone back to work. Bonnie, 11 years older than John, was like a surrogate mom.
“I can take you back to the very night,” she said, wiping away tears as she remembered back to Thursday, Oct. 15, 1964. “He was not the type of child that didn't come home on time. He was always there when he was supposed to be. Well, I had fixed supper that night, and by 6 o’clock, he wasn't home. But he came home from school (earlier) and got some Coke bottles. He got the Coke bottles and he went up to the store up the street to cash the pop bottles in, and that's the last time I ever saw him.
“I called my mom at work and told her and she said, 'Well, call around and see if you can find him.' So I called some of his friends and, you know, hollered for him outside ... no answer. Mom came home from work and she called the police. And the police came and said, ‘He's just run away.’”
But Bonnie said her brother wouldn’t have done that.
“There was no reason. There was no argument. Nobody was fighting. Nobody was mad at him. Nothing,” she said. “He just walked up the street with the pop bottles. I watched him walk up there. That was the last I seen of him.”
Witnesses reported seeing the two boys walking along Wooster Pike near Frisch’s and paying a bill there. That made sense to Bonnie.
“They were always together. They were inseparable. They were best buddies,” she said.
But then the boys vanished together -- and the mystery began....
... (investigator) Murphy was only 14 at the time and didn’t join Fairfax police until nine years later, but he said he quickly started working the case and reading the original investigators’ reports.
“We had a lot of construction going on back in '64, especially across the Pike,” Murphy said. “The first theory was that they fell down a manhole ... were playing around some digging areas and got covered up by all the dirt that they put in.”
Workers dug up several work sites in a vain search, Murphy said.
“They actually dug up some of the piping that they put in across the street on Spring Street thinking that they fell down a hole and got covered up with dirt. They dug it all up and down here on the west side of Fairfax. Swallen's warehouse was going in, so there was a lot of mounds of hills. You know how kids are -- they like to climb these hills.” ... John and Jimmy were “outdoors kids.”
“These kids were out after school and they'd kind of run the streets of Fairfax," Murphy said. "They were fun loving -- not out causing any trouble. It was kind of a little different than the kids today.”
Murphy didn’t put much faith in a report about a Cadillac driver abducting the boys... “I think it's unlikely that these two kids would let somebody grab them both up... That investigation didn’t go far, because there wasn’t much information to go on.
Murphy said he left Fairfax police in 1984 and went to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. In 2010, he returned to Fairfax and the missing boys case.
“In 2010, we had some information that was given to the police department. One of them was that they were abducted and buried in an area that we kind of looked at,” Murphy said... It turned out to be false.
... One of the strangest tips led Murphy to New England.
“A lady from Foxborough, Massachusetts, had emailed Fairfax saying that her father did it ... I started communicating with her ... We decided that we had to follow this to the end,” Murphy said...
Murphy went to several family members and got DNA samples....
... Murphy said he and the chief then drove to Foxborough and talked to the woman, and then he went to New Hampshire to interview her mother and siblings.
The woman “had some psychological problems,” Murphy said. “I even interviewed her therapist. She thought she was telling the truth. Her statement was that her father abducted these kids and killed them in the basement and then buried them underneath the porch in Foxborough.”...
... Just in case, Murphy said he arranged to get a cadaver dog from Foxborough police and searched the house. They found nothing, Then he went down to Kentucky where the woman’s father lived. He was originally from Middletown.
After that, Murphy decided there was nothing to the woman’s claims....
... Three years after the boys disappeared, it appeared that the case had been solved. A 17-year-old Marine private named Gary Lee McKee said he had killed them. McKee, who grew up in Fairfax and was living there when the boys went missing, confessed to a minister in San Diego, where he was stationed.
McKee promised to show Fairfax police where he buried the bodies... McKee took them for a ride...
“'No, it was over here … No, it was over here …’ and finally he said, ‘No, I lied about it. I just told that to get out of the service.’...
“We interviewed him -- I couldn't tell you how many times -- (and we) polygraphed him,” Murphy said. “You know, that was the Vietnam War so he was probably going to Vietnam and I don't think he wanted to take that venture.”
It worked for McKee.... “At that point the Marine Corps said, ‘We don't want any more to do with you,'”...
... To be sure, police dug up McKee's backyard, where he said he buried the weapon, and found nothing, according to reports. They didn't dig up the areas where he said he buried the boys. They had been developed.
John and Jimmy would be in their 60s if they’re alive. So what happened to them?
Murphy’s best guess is they died accidentally the day they went missing.
“I think they just ... all the construction that was going on in Fairfax back then, they may have gone in a hole and was buried up with dirt that fell in behind them and didn't make it out,” Murphy said. “And we didn't dig the right areas (to find them)."
John’s sister doesn’t think they died by accident.
“I don't believe he ever left Fairfax. I believe he's buried down there where the old schoolhouse used to be in them woods that were down there,” she said.
She said she wishes police could give McKee another polygraph test using updated technology.
Both agree time is running out.
"I just hope and pray that before the rest of us leave here that we find out something ... about him," Hundley-Zornes said.
Murphy said he "would love to solve this thing” for the families, but “the case gets cold, memories are lost and people die."
"All of the investigators that initially worked this case back in '64 -- Fairfax, Hamilton County Sheriff's Office, Cincinnati PD - they're all deceased,” Murphy said. “We get calls from time to time ... we just really don't have any good concrete leads.
“Hopefully, one day -- who knows -- remains may be found.”
If you have information about this case, call Fairfax police at 513-271-7250.
LINK:
What happened to these boys who vanished in '64?
FAIRFAX, Ohio -- Were Johnny Hundley and Jimmy McQueary killed by the neighborhood teen who confessed to stabbing them, only to retract that confession later?...
- Were the 9-year-old best friends killed by a man who buried their bodies under a porch in Massachusetts, as his daughter claimed?...
- Were they kidnapped by someone driving a black Cadillac near the Frisch’s on Wooster Pike, as one witness reported?
- Did they die accidentally – perhaps falling into one of the many construction digs in the east-side village 53 years ago?...
... The disappearance of the Fairfax School third-graders in 1964 is the oldest cold case in Tri-Staters’ memories, and one of the most baffling. Fairfax police Det. Mike Murphy, who has worked on the case over several decades, says there have been “50 to 60 different rumors.” ...
... Hundreds of officers and volunteers young and old searched the village, combing through the high grass and brush along the Little Miami River and digging up freshly filled construction sites. The search went nationwide. Railroad workers looked through freight cars in case the boys had decided to go on an adventure. The investigation took Fairfax officers to California, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Kentucky.
Murphy, who started investigating the case in the 1970s, has his theory. So does John Hundley’s sister...
... Bonnie Hundley-Zornes still aches to know what happened to her little brother and his best friend...
... “It all ended when he walked up the street ... He had on a white T-shirt, and blue jeans and white gym shoes. He had just gotten home from school. It was about 3:30 in the afternoon,” she said.
Bonnie was 20 at the time, the oldest of four kids. Their father had died a year earlier and their mother had gone back to work. Bonnie, 11 years older than John, was like a surrogate mom.
“I can take you back to the very night,” she said, wiping away tears as she remembered back to Thursday, Oct. 15, 1964. “He was not the type of child that didn't come home on time. He was always there when he was supposed to be. Well, I had fixed supper that night, and by 6 o’clock, he wasn't home. But he came home from school (earlier) and got some Coke bottles. He got the Coke bottles and he went up to the store up the street to cash the pop bottles in, and that's the last time I ever saw him.
“I called my mom at work and told her and she said, 'Well, call around and see if you can find him.' So I called some of his friends and, you know, hollered for him outside ... no answer. Mom came home from work and she called the police. And the police came and said, ‘He's just run away.’”
But Bonnie said her brother wouldn’t have done that.
“There was no reason. There was no argument. Nobody was fighting. Nobody was mad at him. Nothing,” she said. “He just walked up the street with the pop bottles. I watched him walk up there. That was the last I seen of him.”
Witnesses reported seeing the two boys walking along Wooster Pike near Frisch’s and paying a bill there. That made sense to Bonnie.
“They were always together. They were inseparable. They were best buddies,” she said.
But then the boys vanished together -- and the mystery began....
... (investigator) Murphy was only 14 at the time and didn’t join Fairfax police until nine years later, but he said he quickly started working the case and reading the original investigators’ reports.
“We had a lot of construction going on back in '64, especially across the Pike,” Murphy said. “The first theory was that they fell down a manhole ... were playing around some digging areas and got covered up by all the dirt that they put in.”
Workers dug up several work sites in a vain search, Murphy said.
“They actually dug up some of the piping that they put in across the street on Spring Street thinking that they fell down a hole and got covered up with dirt. They dug it all up and down here on the west side of Fairfax. Swallen's warehouse was going in, so there was a lot of mounds of hills. You know how kids are -- they like to climb these hills.” ... John and Jimmy were “outdoors kids.”
“These kids were out after school and they'd kind of run the streets of Fairfax," Murphy said. "They were fun loving -- not out causing any trouble. It was kind of a little different than the kids today.”
Murphy didn’t put much faith in a report about a Cadillac driver abducting the boys... “I think it's unlikely that these two kids would let somebody grab them both up... That investigation didn’t go far, because there wasn’t much information to go on.
Murphy said he left Fairfax police in 1984 and went to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. In 2010, he returned to Fairfax and the missing boys case.
“In 2010, we had some information that was given to the police department. One of them was that they were abducted and buried in an area that we kind of looked at,” Murphy said... It turned out to be false.
... One of the strangest tips led Murphy to New England.
“A lady from Foxborough, Massachusetts, had emailed Fairfax saying that her father did it ... I started communicating with her ... We decided that we had to follow this to the end,” Murphy said...
Murphy went to several family members and got DNA samples....
... Murphy said he and the chief then drove to Foxborough and talked to the woman, and then he went to New Hampshire to interview her mother and siblings.
The woman “had some psychological problems,” Murphy said. “I even interviewed her therapist. She thought she was telling the truth. Her statement was that her father abducted these kids and killed them in the basement and then buried them underneath the porch in Foxborough.”...
... Just in case, Murphy said he arranged to get a cadaver dog from Foxborough police and searched the house. They found nothing, Then he went down to Kentucky where the woman’s father lived. He was originally from Middletown.
After that, Murphy decided there was nothing to the woman’s claims....
... Three years after the boys disappeared, it appeared that the case had been solved. A 17-year-old Marine private named Gary Lee McKee said he had killed them. McKee, who grew up in Fairfax and was living there when the boys went missing, confessed to a minister in San Diego, where he was stationed.
McKee promised to show Fairfax police where he buried the bodies... McKee took them for a ride...
“'No, it was over here … No, it was over here …’ and finally he said, ‘No, I lied about it. I just told that to get out of the service.’...
“We interviewed him -- I couldn't tell you how many times -- (and we) polygraphed him,” Murphy said. “You know, that was the Vietnam War so he was probably going to Vietnam and I don't think he wanted to take that venture.”
It worked for McKee.... “At that point the Marine Corps said, ‘We don't want any more to do with you,'”...
... To be sure, police dug up McKee's backyard, where he said he buried the weapon, and found nothing, according to reports. They didn't dig up the areas where he said he buried the boys. They had been developed.
John and Jimmy would be in their 60s if they’re alive. So what happened to them?
Murphy’s best guess is they died accidentally the day they went missing.
“I think they just ... all the construction that was going on in Fairfax back then, they may have gone in a hole and was buried up with dirt that fell in behind them and didn't make it out,” Murphy said. “And we didn't dig the right areas (to find them)."
John’s sister doesn’t think they died by accident.
“I don't believe he ever left Fairfax. I believe he's buried down there where the old schoolhouse used to be in them woods that were down there,” she said.
She said she wishes police could give McKee another polygraph test using updated technology.
Both agree time is running out.
"I just hope and pray that before the rest of us leave here that we find out something ... about him," Hundley-Zornes said.
Murphy said he "would love to solve this thing” for the families, but “the case gets cold, memories are lost and people die."
"All of the investigators that initially worked this case back in '64 -- Fairfax, Hamilton County Sheriff's Office, Cincinnati PD - they're all deceased,” Murphy said. “We get calls from time to time ... we just really don't have any good concrete leads.
“Hopefully, one day -- who knows -- remains may be found.”
If you have information about this case, call Fairfax police at 513-271-7250.
LINK:
What happened to these boys who vanished in '64?
John Hundley and James McQueary (click on image to enlarge)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
FBI poster of the missing boys:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
James McQueary
Age 9 at time of disappearance
Hair Brown
Height 3’6” (42 inches)
Weight 65 pounds
Build Grey - Blue
Race White
-------------------
John E. Hundley
Age 9 at time of disappearance
Hair Brown
Eyes Brown
Height 4' (48 inches)
Weight 85
Sex Male
Race White
Details:
At approximately 2030 hours, October 15, 1964, Johnny Hundley and best friend Jimmy McQueary were reported missing from Fairfax, Hamilton County, Ohio. The boys were best friends and it would have been uncommon to find either boy without the other. They were last seen walking to Johnny’s home from Frisch’s restaurant located at 5770 Wooster Pike, Cincinnati, Ohio. The boys never returned home.
Submit a Tip:
If you have any information concerning this person, please contact your local FBI office or the nearest American Embassy or Consulate.
LINK:
JOHN E. HUNDLEY - FAIRFAX, OHIO — FBI
JAMES A. MCQUERY - FAIRFAX, OHIO | Federal Bureau of Investigation
Last edited:
About 1967, Gary Lee McKee who was then 17 years old and in the US Marine Corps, "confessed" to having murdered John and James and burying their bodies. He would have been 14 years old at the time the boys went missing.
He was sent from San Diego, CA where he was in Marine Boot Camp back to Cincinnati for questioning. Upon his arrival, he recanted his confession and said he only wanted to get out of the Marine Corps.
I wonder how that worked out for him? What repercussions came down on him for making a false official statement? If indeed he was lying. What did he know about the boys' disappearance, and how did he know?
The cold blooded murder of two 9 year old boys seems a rather remote thing for only one 14 year old boy to do - or even claim to have done later. Could Gary Lee McKee have possibly been involved in some way - perhaps with a gang, or with an older pedophile?
He was sent from San Diego, CA where he was in Marine Boot Camp back to Cincinnati for questioning. Upon his arrival, he recanted his confession and said he only wanted to get out of the Marine Corps.
I wonder how that worked out for him? What repercussions came down on him for making a false official statement? If indeed he was lying. What did he know about the boys' disappearance, and how did he know?
The cold blooded murder of two 9 year old boys seems a rather remote thing for only one 14 year old boy to do - or even claim to have done later. Could Gary Lee McKee have possibly been involved in some way - perhaps with a gang, or with an older pedophile?
Molly's Mom
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Long shot but could these boys and their disappearance be connected to the 3 missing boys from Hannibal, MO? Johnny and James disappeared in '64 and the 3 Hannibal boys disappeared in '67. Fairfax is about a 9 hour drive (present day) to Hannibal down US 36. I just wonder if this could be connected.
ChatteringBirds
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Directionless9
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I live a few houses down from the old McKee home and I came across this page searching for the history of my neighborhood. This map that I found on a History of Fairfax blog is great, and shows many key locations relating to the case. The McKee home was about three houses south of Oriole Court between Oriole and Frisch’s, so practically behind Fairfax School (now Mariemont Junior High). You can walk between people’s yards on Oriole Court to get directly from the school baseball field to the McKee house in about two minutes. Meadowlark dead ends at another park (where the schools and neighborhood leagues play sports) and there’s direct access to a creek (Little Duck Creek) just feet from the end of Meadowlark. This is the same creek where Debbie Dappen’s shoe was found (Debbie Dappen has been referred to as 'the murdered toddler' in this thread). She lived one block from the Hundley’s, and was found about another block northeast at Watterson and Elder.
This Ws page has more info about GLM..
www.websleuths.com
'1967 Press Photo Gary Lee McKee, confessed to killing 2 nine year old boys.'
outlet.historicimages.com
www.newspapers.com
OH - OH - John Hundley & James McQueary, both 9, Fairfax, 15 Oct 1964
I wonder if LE looked at Stanley Everett Rice for these disappearances.........He was a serial killer and he is the man I mentioned in the previous message. He got life in Fla and Oh if he gets out of prison in Fla. I think Canada might have prosecuted him too. I'm not sure. They didn't find...
www.websleuths.com
'1967 Press Photo Gary Lee McKee, confessed to killing 2 nine year old boys.'
1967 Press Photo Gary Lee McKee, confessed to killing 2 nine year old boys.
Photo measures 8.25 x 10.75 in.
outlet.historicimages.com
Clipping from The Cincinnati Enquirer - Newspapers.com
Clipping found in The Cincinnati Enquirer in Cincinnati, Ohio on Sep 15, 1967.
www.newspapers.com
Directionless9
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I took some video of the walk from the McKee house to the Frisch’s Mainliner today when I went to pick my girls up from school, but it’s apparently too large a file to post here. It took 26 seconds for me to walk from their property line around the corner to where the hedges are that are in line with the Frisch’s building and drive thru at a normal (for me) pace.
In other somewhat disappointing news, I found Claude McKee’s obituary and it would appear that Gary McKee has passed on, taking any information he may have had to the grave with him.
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/claude-mckee-obituary?id=31828565
In other somewhat disappointing news, I found Claude McKee’s obituary and it would appear that Gary McKee has passed on, taking any information he may have had to the grave with him.
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/claude-mckee-obituary?id=31828565
steff13
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Looks like Gary died in 2012
www.findagrave.com
Gary L McKee (1950-2012) - Find a Grave Memorial
Born in 1950 and died in 2012 Milford, Ohio Gary L McKee
www.findagrave.com
Directionless9
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Interesting that the parents didn’t make a space for him on the family headstone.