The Unsolved Murder of Salvatore Favazzo

Over a century later, the brutal murder of Salvatore Favazzo remains one of Tuscarawas County’s most haunting unsolved crimes.

In the summer of 1917, Salvatore “Sam” Favazzo (c. 1887-1917) was a familiar face in the Italian neighborhoods of Dennison, Ohio. A man in his early forties, he lived in a local boarding house and owned only a handful of modest possessions—a trunk, a few articles of clothing, and a photograph of himself with a fellow Italian immigrant named Casper Contini (1887-1955) of Dover. On July 30th, Salvatore signed up to join a company of the Ohio National Guard that was mustered and training nearby in Uhrichsville. He was scheduled to report to the army physician just two days later, on August 1st, but Salvatore never made that appointment. He vanished entirely, and the military listed him as a deserter.

On October 13th, 1917, two boys, Allen Bernhard (1906-1988) and G.W. Braun (1907-?), were gathering nuts in a wooded area known as Slingluff Woods, just north of Dover. Near the farm of H.R. Zurcher (1878-1925), the boys stumbled upon a decomposing human body curled in a fetal position, partially covered by decaying clothing and leaves. Local authorities were called to the scene, among them was Coroner Charles C. Murphy (1878-1931). What he observed was chilling. Either the man was murdered elsewhere and thrown hastily into the brush, or he had died in that very spot in agony.

The body was taken to the Keuerleber Brothers Morgue in Dover where an autopsy was conducted. The man had been shot at least nine times with a single .32 caliber pistol, three of the victim’s ribs were broken, and a bullet pierced his pelvis. Coroner Murphy estimated the man had been dead for about three months. The victim’s clothing and personal effects; trousers, a hat with the initials “S.F.,” and a switchman’s style padlock key stamped F-4383, were all the coroner and investigators had to try to determine the man’s identity. Coroner Murphy began a canvass of the local community in an effort to learn the victims name.

Meanwhile, the body was buried in Maple Grove Cemetery on October 17th, but the mystery remained. A break in the case came when Coroner Murphy questioned a man in Dennison’s Italian community. Upon seeing the switchman’s key, the man responded, “Why, that’s Sam’s key,” and directed Murphy to a grocery store where “Sam” had an account. There, an account book listed the owner of the key as Salvatore Favazzo. A search of Favazzo’s trunk at his former boarding house revealed the telling photograph with Casper Contini, who mistakenly became the focus of the investigation.

Authorities questioned Contini, but he was soon cleared of suspicion when the cause for considering him a suspect turned out to be merely confusion about threats Contini made against another Italian immigrant. Despite the initial excitement, the list of viable suspects dwindled, and no one was ever charged in Favazzo’s murder. Still, some clues refused to fade. The brutality of the killing – nine bullets fired into a man of modest means, with no effort to rob beyond an emptied watch pocket – spoke not of a crime of opportunity, but of something far more personal. Someone had wanted Favazzo dead badly enough to stand over him and fire nine rounds into his body. But why?

Though over a hundred years have passed, the murder of Salvatore Favazzo remains one of Tuscarawas County’s more disturbing unsolved crimes. The woods where he was found have long since changed, and the men and women who once whispered about the murder and may have known the killer are gone. Ohio census record searches for the years 1910 and 1920 found families with the surname Favazzo, or similar, lived in Cleveland and Canton. Whether “Sam” was related to these families is unknown. Salvatore Favazzo came to the United States in search of a better life for himself and his future family. That hope was killed, along with him, in a stand of woods just outside the Dover city limits on a summer day in 1917.

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© Noel B. Poirier, 2024.