Bullet in the Night: The 1928 Murder of Charles Eggan

On a September night in 1928, a stable boss at Midvale Mine #4, was found dead with a bullet wound to the head—setting off a decades-long mystery.

Charles Orland Eggan (1898-1928) was the son of James Early Eggan (1872-1939) and Olive Matbell Ryan (1870-1940), a farming couple rooted in Tuscarawas County, Ohio. Raised on the family farm in Warren Township, Charles grew up working the land alongside his parents and siblings. He helped mange the family’s holdings in Barnhill while living in nearby Sherrodsville, Carroll County when he registered for the World War One draft in 1918. Charles married Goldie Leggett (1903-1987) four years later and, three years after their marriage, welcomed a son in 1925. Charles eventually took a full-time position as one of the stable bosses at Midvale Mine #4 of the Midvale Coal Company.

According to newspaper reporting from the time, Charles Eggan went to work his night shift at Mine #4’s stable on the evening of September 26, 1928. Sometime around 1:30 am an unknown person fired a single round at the back of Charles’s head. He fell forward onto the stable floor with a .32 caliber bullet entrance wound behind his left ear. When Charles failed to return home, Goldie asked a friend to go to the mine and fetch him. When that friend arrived at the mine around 5:00 am, he discovered Charles’ lifeless body and contacted authorities. The county coroner, after performing an autopsy, determined that Charles Eggan had been murdered.

The investigation began almost immediately, and according to an interview with Goldie, Charles had made at least one enemy recently. After months of leads, investigation, and interviews a grand jury was finally called in April 1929 to review the evidence collected. Authorities did have a person-of-interest and many individuals from Midvale and Barnhill were called as witnesses including many of Eggan’s neighbors and coworkers. Unfortunately, no indictment resulted from that grand jury proceeding and the investigating and evidence gathering dragged on throughout 1929.

The authorities’ person-of-interest was Frank Tonelotti (1895-1934) who, along with his estranged wife, was initially held by authorities as a material witness. Frank was the Ohio-born eldest son of Italian immigrants Antonio Tonelotti (1856-1930) and Maria Telaroli (1871-1936), who resided in Barnhill. Frank worked as a miner for the Midvale Coal Company before, and after, he served in the Army during World War One. Frank married Ethel Hawk of neighboring Coshocton in 1925, but they divorced in late 1929. Earlier that same year, Frank was shot while attempting to escape late one night from a neighbor’s home in Barnhill under less than savory circumstances.

County authorities hired an undercover investigator, a policeman from Dennison, to continue the search for evidence in the murder of Charles Eggan. That man gathered enough further evidence that a January 1930 grand jury issued an indictment of murder in the first degree against Frank Tonelotti. Unfortunately for the county and the grand jury, two grand jury investigations and dozens of witness statements were not enough and the County prosecuting attorney was unwilling to pursue the indictment against Frank Tonelotti.

Almost two thousand people attended Charles Orland Eggan’s funeral when he was buried in the Roxford Church Cemetery. Goldie Eggan and her son moved to New Philadelphia, Ohio after her husband’s murder and she would later remarry. Goldie Eggan died in 1987 and is buried next to her late husband Charles. Frank Tonelotti died from burns he received after a mining accident in the fall of 1934. Whether and why Frank Tonelotti, or another person, actually pulled the trigger and killed Charles Eggan remains unknown to this day.

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© Noel B. Poirier, 2024.