Dreamland Park Murders

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The Dreamland Park murders. In August 1969, outlaw bikers murdered a young couple at their abandoned amusement park-turned-clubhouse, and those same bikers may be responsible for the unsolved murders of two sisters in August 1968 as well.

When our listeners hear “August 1969,” they probably think of The Manson Family murders. Today we’ll examine another chilling crime spree from that era on the other side of the United States: the Dreamland Park murders. In August 1969, outlaw bikers murdered a young couple at their abandoned amusement park-turned-clubhouse, and those same bikers may be responsible for the unsolved murders of two sisters in August 1968 as well. While two of the men involved died in prison, it’s likely that two more killers were allowed to walk free, and that’s just one symptom of an organized crime problem that has plagued the area for generations and lies at the heart of today’s case.

The Dreamland Park murders. In August 1969, outlaw bikers murdered a young couple at their abandoned amusement park-turned-clubhouse, and those same bikers may be responsible for the unsolved murders of two sisters in August 1968 as well.
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THE DUTCH SUBURBS OF PHILLY

The city of Reading, in Southeastern Pennsylvania, is central to this case. It sits just an hour or so northwest of Philadelphia, and it’s the home of the Reading Railroad (the same one from Monopoly). Reading is the seat of Berks County, making up nearly a quarter of the entire county’s population. But outside of the city, Berks County is a mostly rural area of forests and farmland, inhabited by the descendants of the Pennsylvania Dutch. This is the land of polka music and barn hex signs, and it wasn’t uncommon to hear residents speaking German around Reading into the 1950s.

By the 1960s and through the 1980s, Reading’s population was decreasing at a rate of 10% at every census. Reading has a tough reputation, and while current crime statistics back that up, much of the city’s problems lie in the political corruption that overtook the city in the mid-20th century. Racketeering was everywhere, in plain sight, and virtually every city official was involved to some degree. Illegal gambling, including the extremely lucrative numbers games that were replaced by The Pennsylvania Lottery, were generally condoned by residents who criticized restrictive state laws.

RALPH KREITZ & THE ORIGINS OF DREAMLAND PARK

Ralph Kreitz, a lifelong Reading resident, made his fortune on illegal gambling, starting at his own athletic club, then convincing other establishments around Berks County, such as fire houses, civic buildings, bars, hotels, and gas stations, to install his gambling machines as well. He grew his enterprise by funding private improvement loans to fellow business owners at 25% interest, bringing them paper bags filled with cash if they agreed to add his gambling machines and pay him 50% of the machine’s profits. Ralph paid police informants to alert business owners of raids in enough time to store his gambling machines off site, and his establishments were rarely investigated at all.

Not only did Ralph’s money improve these popular establishments, but he always bought rounds for customers when he came to collect, and this aided in his popularity among Reading’s working class. He earned a beloved reputation beyond his gambling patrons taking care of his aging mother, paying neighbors’ hospital bills, donating to churches, buying thousands of Christmas trees for the poor, and even chartering busses to take inner city Philadelphia kids to baseball games.

The Dreamland Park murders. In August 1969, outlaw bikers murdered a young couple at their abandoned amusement park-turned-clubhouse, and those same bikers may be responsible for the unsolved murders of two sisters in August 1968 as well.

In 1938, Ralph’s brother, Alton Kreitz, purchased a 17-acre property off Pricetown Road in Ruscombmanor Township, about a half hour’s drive northwest of Reading. Ralph converted the farmland into an amusement area he called Dreamland Park and opened it to the public in 1939. It was an older-style family picnic and entertainment area tucked into the woods, featuring a merry-go-round, miniature racetrack, roller rink, indoor theater for live shows, picnic groves, and of course, illegal gambling.

Despite Ralph’s charity and connections, his crimes started catching up to him when he was convicted of tax evasion in 1948. Before issuing a 60-day sentence, the presiding judge remarked, “I feel like I’m putting Santa Claus in jail.” Ralph’s mother, who he had been housing and caring for, passed away in 1949. In 1950, the IRS seized Ralph’s athletic club. He openly revealed the details of his racketeering activities during a 1951 trial that resulted in a four-month prison sentence and the conviction of several others. At the time, Ralph’s machines netted approximately $4,000 each month, or roughly $1,800 for Ralph after business expenses. In 2022 dollars, that means he was pocketing at least $21,000 himself each month from the machines alone, tax free.

Dreamland Park closed to the public for good in 1956 when the IRS seized it as well for Ralph’s unpaid back taxes.

THE PAGANS TAKE OVER

Ralph’s legal troubles were part of a greater effort to crack down on Reading’s organized crime and related political corruption. But instead of controlling the problem, it created a vacuum of power that allowed other criminal elements to move in. That included the Pagan Motorcycle Club.

Motorcycle clubs began in the 1940s with returning WWII veterans who missed the camaraderie and excitement they enjoyed while serving. While most of these clubs were harmless social groups, an emerging ‘outlaw’ element made national news in 1947. These few bikers – the “one percenters” – engaged in criminal acts that escalated from disorderly conduct to murder and everything in between, occasionally operating right alongside the American mafia in their drug, weapons, and sex trafficking activities.

The Pagans, an early one percenter gang, maintained clubhouses throughout their east coast territory for living, socializing, and carrying out their illegal activities. The clubhouses were also hangouts for drug users, hippies, and runaways. In the late 1960s, Reading was home to at least two Pagan clubhouses: an abandoned airport hangar and Dreamland Park. And both properties were owned by the same person: Musa Eways, the father of Pagans member James Eways.

After Ralph Kreitz lost the Dreamland Park property over back taxes, a man named Paul Zipp bought it at sheriff’s sale in 1958. Paul sold it to Diversified Management Corporation in 1963. Diversified Management sold it to one of its members, David Gehret, in 1966, and he purchased it with a loan from…Diversified Management, his business. However, locals, police, and reporters say the owner was really Musa Eways, David Gehret’s business partner and another one of Diversified Management’s members.

Musa, originally from Palestine, was a wealthy engineer who owned several businesses and properties in Berks County. (Fun fact, at one time he even owned the property next door to Taylor Swift’s childhood home.) According to police, Musa also owned an abandoned airport hangar that the Pagans were using as their clubhouse before Dreamland Park. That hangar was integral to the investigation of an unsolved double homicide in August 1968, and that might be the reason why the Pagans moved their clubhouse to Dreamland Park, another one of Musa’s properties, soon after.

THE FIRST BODIES TURN UP

On August 22, 1968, 14-year-old Michael Moore was walking to work at a horse farm about a half hour south of Reading when he noticed a strong odor. He located its source at the base of a tree, where he saw a pair of legs in the underbrush. Michael had found a murdered woman who the medical examiner estimated to be 15-20 years old. She died about a week prior from multiple .22-caliber gunshot wounds – five in her torso, and one to her left temple. She was still wearing her bra, a black blouse, nylon stockings, white girdle, white sandals, and a bronze crucifix on a chain.

A mushroom hunter in French Creek State Park found more remains eight months later, on April 18, 1969, just three and a half miles away from the first body. Her skeleton was in the fetal position on top of a flat rock, and while her cause of death could not be determined, her date of death was also believed to be August 14, 1968. She was approximately 21 years old. Only a pair of panties and a single white sandal, an identical match to the pair found with the other victim, were found nearby.

Police quickly connected the two Janes Does to the Pagan Motorcycle Club and their increasingly troubling activities in the area. They searched the Pagans’ clubhouse, the abandoned hangar Musa Eways owned, in August 1969. They found photographs of two young women they believed could be the victims or other women who might be able to help identify them, but another 45 years would pass before that could happen.

A FATEFUL WEEK IN AUGUST

August 1969: just as the Berks County Janes Does’ case seemed to be heating up, news of the Tate-Labianca murders was breaking, and Berks County residents were kicking off their annual Kutztown Fair. Bikers from New York and Florida travelled to the Pagans’ Dreamland Park hideout to attend the fair and pickup women. Among the Pagans welcoming visitors that week were James “the A-rab” Eways, age 19, the son of Dreamland Park property’s owner, and Leroy “Righteous Elroy” Stoltzfus, a 24-year-old from Leola, Lancaster County.

Leroy’s father was a Mennonite bishop, but Leroy loved riding motorcycles and left the church to join the U.S. Air Force, eventually falling in with the Pagans. Out-of-towners Robert “Bobby the Juice” Martinolich, a Thunderbolts Motorcycle Club member from Seldon, New York, and Harlin “the Wolfman” Bailey, another Thunderbolt up from Florida, hung out with James and Leroy on Tuesday, August 12. After an unsuccessful day at the fair, the four bikers piled in their Ford Econoline van to look for women elsewhere.

They would eventually encounter 18-year-old Marilyn Sheckler, from Murrysville, Westmoreland County (near Pittsburgh). She graduated from Franklin Regional High School that spring, where she was a mascot and swimmer. That summer, Marilyn moved in with her brother, Grant Jr (“Ted”), in Exeter township, just east of Reading city proper. She took a job working the cash register at a Boscov’s department store restaurant, and that’s where she met Glenn Eckert.

Glenn was 20, a 1967 graduate of Conrad Weiser High School. He was from Robesonia, about a half hour west of Reading. His father ran several Country Kitchen restaurants at local Boscov’s department stores, and Glenn was working for his father that summer of 1969. One of his responsibilities was collecting the cash for bank deposit, and that’s how he and Marilyn became acquainted. On Tuesday, August 12, Glenn stopped by Marilyn and her brother’s place at 9:00 p.m. to pick Marilyn up for a date, just a ride. They left the house at 9:30 p.m.

That same night, 20-year-old James Buchter and two of his friends became lost when trying to visit a friend on Pricetown Road, near the Dreamland Park property. They turned down the wrong road and ended up at a locked gate. When they attempted to reverse their vehicle and exit the way they came, they saw a van occupied by several men blocking the road. James described the men as “bikers,” and says they pulled him and his two friends from their car. They beat all three of them with clubs and chains, stabbed James, and then threatened to harm their families if they snitched.

James returned home with serious injuries, and his brother-in-law convinced him to go to the hospital, helping him come up with a cover story about falling on broken glass. But after doctors examined James’s wounds, they called police. With further questioning, James reluctantly revealed what happened, and police headed to the Dreamland Park property to investigate.

By midnight or shortly after, Glenn and Marilyn had parked their light blue car at a spot along Skyline Drive, a well-known part of the Reading parks system which overlooks the city. James, Leroy, Robert, and Harlin were riding around the area at the same time and pulled their van in beside the couple upon spotting them. James stayed in the van while the other three bikers forced their way into Glenn and Marilyn’s vehicle. Harlin took the driver’s seat, following James and the van to a Leesport train station, about 20 minutes north. There they abandoned the couple’s vehicle (Harlin pocketed the car keys), and Robert used a gun to force Glenn and Marilyn into the van with the rest of them.

As the group slowly made their way to the Dreamland Park clubhouse, the four bikers took turns raping Marilyn in pairs. They arrived sometime between 2:00 and 4:00 a.m. with plans to continue “training” Marilyn and scaring both her and Glenn into silence. “Train” was the word James used in his trial testimony, and he defined it as “all of us hav[ing] sexual relations with the girl.” But when they arrived at Dreamland, police were already there responding to James Buchter’s assault earlier that night.

The Pagans decided to drive around a bit more, but when they returned and police were still at the clubhouse, they ditched the van and forced Glenn and Marilyn into the dense woods surrounding the park. There are four different versions of what happened next, but autopsy results show that Glenn was beaten and shot multiple times. Marilyn suffered severe blunt force trauma, especially to the back and lefthand side of her skull. By the time they were discovered, it would be impossible to determine the specific weapons used.

THE INVESTIGATION INTENSIFIES

Glenn’s father, Charles, was the first to report Glenn and Marilyn missing when he realized the next morning that his son hadn’t arrived back home. Police believed the couple had run away to attend the music festival in Woodstock happening that upcoming weekend, even calling police in New York for help. But Charles instinctively knew the couple had been victims of foul play.

The next day, ten people were arrested around Reading in connection with James Buchter’s stabbing, including two underage girls and four bikers who weren’t even at Dreamland Park the night of the incident. Police were rounding up local “bikers” or young people who looked that way based on James’s description. All four gang members involved in Glenn and Marilyn’s murders just the night before – James, Leroy, Robert, and Harlin – were arrested too. Police confiscated the car keys Harlin had on him, but they didn’t realize their significance yet. Musa Eways bailed his son out early, and James fled to Texas to hide out. The remaining bikers were released after extensive questioning.

While Woodstock was gearing up, in the wake of the Dreamland Park stabbing, Ruscombmanor Township residents met with officials to discuss their safety concerns surrounding the Pagans and their newest clubhouse. They claimed the bikers began renovating the property’s abandoned theatre building that summer without proper permitting. However, the township building inspector assured them that he had spoken with the property owner, Musa Eways, and was satisfied that the repairs were not the type that required permitting – things like fixing broken windows, painting, and mowing grass.

Nothing came of the meeting, but police did locate Glenn’s car the following week in Leesport, where it had been abandoned. The car contained a bag with $489.23, which Glenn had collected from his father’s restaurants on August 12 and never made it to the bank to deposit. Their shoes and a t-shirt were also located inside the car.

Police found Glenn’s body on October 23, more than two months after he was murdered, between Pricetown and Oley Furnace roads, on the outskirts of Dreamland Park. Court documents reveal that Harlin and James provided details to police about the couples’ disappearance that led police to the burial site. Glenn’s dark, thick-framed eyeglasses were still resting on his skull, and sunlight reflecting off them drew police to his remains.

Marilyn’s body was located a day later, 200 yards northeast of Glenn’s. Still wearing her girdle and yellow minidress, she laid in a shallow grave covered over with boulders off Oley Furnace Road, at the edge of a field, beneath an apple tree.

VERSIONS OF THE TRUTH REVEALED

After these discoveries, Musa Eways flew to Texas and encouraged his son to surrender to police. James was the first to implicate Robert Martinolich, saying that Robert confessed to him about shooting Glenn. In exchange for this information, Pennsylvania agreed not to charge James in connection with the kidnapping, rape, murders, or conspiracy to cover up the crimes. But since they still needed someone to charge with Marilyn’s murder, they turned the pressure up on James’s three accomplices.

After learning that James was talking, Harlin Bailey decided to also make a deal with the state. He pinned Marilyn’s murder on Leroy Stoltzfus and, like James, agreed to testify against both Leroy and Robert at their murder trials. In exchange, Pennsylvania wouldn’t charge Harlin with kidnapping, rape, murder, or conspiracy either.

Robert Martinolich went to trial first in the spring of 1970. He insisted that he never met Glenn or Marilyn and claimed that, after attending the Kutztown Fair, the four men bought sodas at a convenience store and returned to Dreamland Park. That’s when they spotted police and ditched the van. He and Leroy walked further into the woods together, trying to conceal themselves and listen to what was going on. He heard police hitting other gang members, asking about him and Leroy, so the two of them hid in the crawl space of a nearby building for about seven hours before escaping through the woods to a nearby hotel.

James Eways testified that it was his idea to pick up girls after the fair that night, but he had suggested looking for single girls at a bar. It was Robert who suggested abducting someone instead. The updated plan was to bring women back to Dreamland Park for other gang members to rape. He claims to have left the scene with Harlin before Glenn and Marilyn were murdered.

Harlin Bailey also testified that he left with James before Leroy and Robert murdered the young couple, elaborating on how Robert and Leroy bragged about the murders afterward and threatened him about reporting it. He claimed that Robert told him how Leroy attempted to strangle Marilyn but hit her in the head with a rock when that didn’t work. Significant portions of Harlin’s testimony depended on confessions Robert and Leroy made to him in prison, after they were arrested. However, the prison warden testified that the men were held separately and unable to mingle, making that confession impossible.

Robert Martinolich was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Leroy Stoltzfus’s trial followed in the fall of 1970, and while he admitted to being forced to participate in Marilyn’s rape, he insisted that he too was innocent of murder.

Leroy claimed that everyone scattered into the woods when they spotted the police at Dreamland and ditched the van. Robert observed the police activity, while James and Harlin went to find an escape vehicle. Eventually, James and Harlin returned with Glenn and Marilyn at gunpoint. When Glenn tried to take the gun from James, the struggle caused the gun to discharge, killing Glenn. James held Leroy with a knife to his throat while Harlin killed Marilyn, beating her in the side of head with the butt of his gun and then a rock. Leroy says Robert, James, and Harlin forced him to help bury the bodies at gunpoint.

Leroy Stoltzfus received the same sentence as Robert, life in prison without the possibility of parole, while James and Harlin went free. Their appeals between 1973 and 1975 were dismissed.

THE AFTERMATH

It’s unclear when the Pagans abandoned their clubhouse, but in 1973, as lawyers started arguing Robert and Leroy’s appeals, Musa Eways’s business partner, David Gehret, once again purchased the Dreamland Park property. This time he was purchasing it from himself with a new partner, Anthony Fischetti, under their joint venture Dreamland Recreation. Once again, David borrowed from his and Musa’s business, Diversified Management, to fund the purchase. Perhaps it was wiser for the father of the state’s witness, whose testimony put Robert and Leroy in prison in the first place, to own the crime scene a little more indirectly.

In 1974, around the same time Robert and Leroy were making headlines with their appeals and accusations that James got away with murder, Musa and his wife, Jeanette, generated their own press by donating a building they owned to keep a local theatre house in operation. The company even performed a long-running musical about the Eways saving the theatre.

James Eways is still living in Pennsylvania. He stayed in the Reading area and followed his father’s footsteps, inheriting at least one of Musa’s businesses after his death in 1984. Despite their connection to the Dreamland Park murders, the Eways maintained a positive reputation and influence in the Reading area.

But James didn’t stay out of trouble forever, even with all that financial protection. In 1995, he was living in the converted Grand View Chapel, part of the old Grand View Sanitorium property his parents owned that was not only unique but the source of local lore. Rumors of hauntings in the 1960s at the abandoned property began luring area teens, like James, into trespassing. In the wee hours of June 15, 1995, after drinking alcohol and smoking pot, 17-year-old Michael Abate, along with three friends, carried on this tradition by driving slowly past the chapel, shining flashlights at the windows, and shouting obscenities. James claimed he only intended to threaten the boys when he aimed his pistol just a few feet away from their vehicle and that the gun fired accidentally…twice, hitting Michael both times, killing him.

James was convicted of involuntarily manslaughter and served just five years in prison. His mother, Jeanette, died in 1999 while he was incarcerated. James inherited the home where he committed murder from his mother’s estate upon his release from prison in 2003.

In 2005, a book was published about the Dreamland Park murders, inferring Leroy Stoltzfus’s innocence and casting suspicion on James and Musa Eways’s business dealings. It’s of local interest and currently out of print, so copies are expensive or hard to find, but the Oley Valley Community Library has one, and you can call them to put your name on the waitlist.

In 2007, Robert Martinolich requested a new trial on the basis that his original trial lawyers struck plea deals with co-defendants who testified against him and therefore did not properly investigate or defend his case. His motion was denied, and Robert died in 2018 while still incarcerated.

Leroy Stoltzfus died in 2010 of his numerous health issues while still in prison. His family maintains his innocence and regrets that they were unsuccessful in their attempts to protect him from the lifestyle he chose.

Harlin Bailey appears to still be alive and residing in Kansas now.

The last activity I could find for Dreamland Park in property searches was in May 2021, when Dreamland Recreation sold the property to Richbliss LLC for $800,000.

THE STIVER SISTERS      

But what about those two Jane Does who were killed the year before Glenn Eckert and Marilyn Sheckler?

In 2013, Hazel DeMoss found promising information on The Doe Network website she was using to search for her older sister, Sandra Stiver, and sister-in-law, Martha Stiver. The pair went missing in August 1968 after leaving their home in Philadelphia. Sandra was just 14, and Martha, aged 17, had recently married Sandra’s older brother, Tom Stiver. The Stiver family moved frequently for work, and when they left Kansas City, Missouri for Philadelphia, Martha joined them. She and Tom had an infant daughter, Samantha Terry, back in Kansas City, and the Stivers believe Sandra and Martha left to reunite with her. Like Hazel, Samantha was working hard to locate her long-lost mother.

After more than forty years without progress, Reading police finally had enough information to mobilize. They exhumed two Jane Does’ bodies from a Berks County potter’s field and matched their DNA to the Stiver family. The remains found in August 1968 were that of Sandra Stiver, and Martha Stiver’s skeletal remains were those discovered in April 1969.

Sandra’s mother, Elizabeth, then 87-years-old, finally received her daughter’s ashes. Sandra’s father had died in 1974 without knowing what happened to her. He shared his birthday with Sandra, his firstborn daughter, and spent the years after her disappearance driving his Ford station wagon back and forth between Ohio, where the Stivers relocated, and Philadelphia, searching fruitlessly for her.

Martha’s cremated remains rest in an urn on her daughter’s nightstand. Samantha Terry is estranged from the Stivers and lives not only with the loss of a mother she never knew, but believing that her mother died trying to be with her.

No one knows for certain why Sandra and Martha Stiver left, where they were going, when they were killed, how, or by whom, and what happened to them along the way. Investigators believed that the sisters worked at the 1968 Reading Fair, and their estimated date of death – August 14, 1968, almost exactly one year before Glenn Eckert and Marilyn Sheckler’s murders – coincides with the annual Kutztown Fair, at which the Pagans were known to prowl for women. Although police thought that the photographs they found at the abandoned airport hangar turned Pagan clubhouse were related to the Stiver sisters and their murder, they’ve never confirmed the identify of the girls in those photos.  

The Stiver family firmly believes that Sandra and Martha were victims of the Pagans, and that their murders are connected to Dreamland Park. In fact, Leroy Stoltzfus had once claimed that James Eways “bragged about killing some girls before the Dreamland Park thing.” Eways confirmed for a local newspaper that investigators had questioned him about Sandra and Martha Stiver. “I made certain mistakes in my life, but that wasn’t one of them,” he said.

IT’S NEVER TOO LATE

When the Stiver sisters were identified with DNA in 2014, it made international news as the oldest Doe case to be solved that way. It was remarkable considering how much time had passed, and it provided hope that even the coldest cases could be cracked.

At a press conference, after handing Sandra Stiver’s cremated remains to her family, Berks County Coroner Dennis Hess made a plea to the public: “If there’s anyone out there with any kind of information from 1968, when these murders took place…please, it’s time to have a conscience and it’s time to fess up.”

If you can help, submit a tip to Crime Alert Berks County online, by calling 1-877-373-9913, or by texting 847411. No one will ask for your name, and information that leads to an arrest will be rewarded with cash.

This episode sponsored by Manscaped.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

For Glenn Eckert & Marilyn Sheckler

For Sandra Stiver & Martha Stiver