No Justice for Mary Cirillo Shundry

On Thanksgiving Eve 1932, a young mother’s life was violently ended in a rural Tuscarawas County boarding house.

Mary Marie Solvey (1907-1932) was born in, 1907 in Coshocton County, Ohio, to Sicilian immigrants Francesco “Frank” Argento (1877-1953) and Rosa “Rose” Mercurio Argento (1879-1921). Her parents married in Sicily in 1903 and arrived in the United States the following year, eventually settling in Coshocton, where they changed their last name to Solvey and Frank worked in a fruit store. Mary lived with her parents and sibling in Coshocton in 1910, and a decade later the growing family moved to Tuscarawas Township, where Frank worked as a frame maker at a local pipe works.

Mary married Martin Cirillo (1904-1926), another Italian immigrant, around 1922 and the couple welcomed three children over the next few years. Martin died from alcohol poisoning on New Years Eve 1926 and left Mary a young widow. Not long after, she became the common-law wife of Mike Shundry (1891-1972), another Italian immigrant who arrived in the United States in 1912. Mary and Mike raised five children together and lived in Sandy Township, Tuscarawas County, where Mike worked as a laborer at a brick plant. The couple lived just two miles east of Sandyville, Ohio, where they operated a boarding house in addition to Mike’s work at the brick plant.

The night before Thanksgiving in 1932, Mary Shundry and her sister were busy cooking and preparing for the next day’s feast. It was around 10:00 p.m. when John Romano, an Italian immigrant and recent boarder at the home, arrived with a small party of men that included his friend, and fellow Italian immigrant, Joe Cuda. Romano had allegedly become attracted to Mary when he boarded in the home and, because of that, the Shundrys forced him to leave the home about two weeks earlier. Romano knocked on the door and, after telling Mike Shundry that he had come to see him, was allowed to enter the home.

Immediately after entering the home, Romano fired four shots from a .38 caliber revolver directly at Mary Shundry, two of which caused fatal wounds to her abdomen, the bullets having punctured her kidney and liver. Mike Shundry ran to get his .22 caliber rifle but was grazed in the shoulder by two additional bullets fried by Romano. Meanwhile Cuda, just outside the doorway, held other residents at bay with a shotgun. Cuda fired two rounds from the shotgun, one of which struck Mary Shundry and created a gaping hole in her side. Mary Shundry was taken to Mercy Hospital in Canton where she later died.

Following the shooting, sheriffs and deputies from both Tuscarawas and Carroll Counties launched an extensive manhunt for John Romano and Joe Cuda, both current residents of Magnolia. Deputy Sheriff Carl A. Scott (1877-1965), while investigating Cuda’s home, discovered hidden quantities of illegal whiskey and beer, suggesting possible criminal activity beyond the murder. Coroners James F. Lewis (1899–1977) of Tuscarawas County and T. C. McQuate (1869-1937) of Stark County collaborated in the official inquest. The two men concluded that Mary Shundry’s death was a homicide caused by multiple gunshot wounds, with both Romano and Cuda identified as having been responsible.

Despite law enforcements’ best efforts, neither Romano nor Cuda were ever apprehended, charged, or tried for the murder of Mary Shundry. The two men likely changed their names and blended into the growing Italian immigrant community in some other location, or possibly they decided to return to Italy to be sure of escaping justice in Ohio. Mike Shundry eventually remarried and continued to live in region along the Tuscarawas and Stark County line until his death in 1972. Mary M. Argento Solvey Cirillo Shundry was buried in Saint Patricks Catholic Cemetery in Mineral City, Ohio.

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© Noel B. Poirier, 2025.