Adam Lantzer and The Newlywed Killing of 1913

A moment of joy between a Dover couple was shattered by a drunken driver on Wooster Road.

Verna C. Dawson (1892–1923) was born in Guernsey County, Ohio, the daughter of Robert E. Dawson (1862–1916) and Etta Little Dawson (1874–1949). Her father, once employed at a pipe works in Newcomerstown, later returned to farming as the family moved between Guernsey and Tuscarawas counties. By age 18, Verna was working as a domestic, likely in or near Dover, where she met Polish immigrant Reinhold Wagner (1885–1913).

Reinhold Wagner was born in January 1885 in the Łódzkie region of Poland to Philip (1841–1918) and Julia Wagner (1845–1936), who married in Poland before immigrating to the United States in 1909. Reinhold’s older brother, Otto (1868–1944), had come to the United States in 1891, and Reinhold followed him in 1903. The Wagner family settled in Dover, Ohio, where they worked as machinists. In 1910, Reinhold was living with his parents on East 8th Street, and the family had become firmly established in the community.

On an October evening in 1913, Reinhold and Verna were walking along Wooster Road in Dover. They had just sealed their future together—Reinhold had proposed, and Verna had said yes. But just moments after he slipped the engagement ring onto her finger, tragedy shattered the moment. A speeding car struck the young man from behind with such force that it broke his back and killed him instantly—in front of his fiancée. The driver did not stop. Just minutes earlier, that same car had injured a woman, and later collided with a physician’s vehicle as it fled the scene.

Verna, shocked and hysterical, ran to a nearby home to get help and called for a doctor, but Wagner was already dead at the roadside. Meanwhile, the reckless driver—Adam Lantzer (1883–1934)—and his passenger continued their high-speed rampage through town. Witnesses and a key clue—a Buick hubcap left at the collision site—led police to Lantzer’s home. He was one of a handful of Buick owners in the county at the time. Lantzer was arrested, released on bond, and eventually charged with manslaughter. The case gripped the community. It was the first time in Ohio history that an automobile driver was to be tried for manslaughter in the death of a pedestrian on a rural road.

When the trial began, the courtroom was filled to capacity for three days of testimony. Hundreds of residents attended—some even brought lunches to avoid losing their seats. After hours of deliberation and multiple ballots, the jury convicted Adam Lantzer of manslaughter. The decision made headlines, setting a precedent in the state and marking a shift in how vehicular responsibility would be interpreted under the law. However, Lantzer remained free on bond throughout 1914 as the case went through two separate appeals. Those appeals were denied, and finally, in July 1915, Lantzer was taken to the Ohio Penitentiary to serve his sentence.

Adam Lantzer, convicted by a jury of manslaughter in the 1913 death of Reinhold Wagner, served less than seven months in the Ohio State Penitentiary before receiving clemency from Ohio Governor Frank Willis (1871–1928) in January 1916. Lantzer returned to Dover, Ohio, where he lived until his death in 1934 from complications related to alcoholism. Verna Dawson married a Stark County clerk in 1919 but tragically died just four years later after accidentally poisoning herself. Reinhold Wagner, the victim in the state’s first vehicular manslaughter case, is buried in Maple Grove Cemetery in Dover, Ohio.

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© Noel B. Poirier, 2025.