The Great Swiss Cheese Heist of 1931

A three-year-old mystery involving 800 pounds of stolen Swiss cheese finally cracked open in 1935.

On a Saturday night in November 1931, a massive quantity of Swiss cheese was stolen from a cellar near Stone Creek at the dairy operated by Swiss immigrant Samuel Knutti (1873–1943). The heist was carried out by Kenneth Umstead (1894–1961), Clifford Boswell (1912–1975), and Victor Lake (1906–1952), who drove down from Salem, Ohio in two cars, confirmed that Knutti was away, broke the lock on the cellar door, and loaded up several hundred pounds of cheese. The conspirators transported the stolen cheese back to Salem and allegedly hid it in the basement of Homer Veon (1895–1963), who was employed as a pottery worker at the time.

The heist remained an unsolved mystery for over three years until January 1935, when Clifford Boswell confessed to his involvement and implicated both Victor Lake and Homer Veon. Following this confession, the Tuscarawas County Sheriff arrested Veon, who by then had been hired as a city patrolman in Salem. Salem’s Mayor quickly suspended Veon pending the outcome of the charges. When the case went before a grand jury, Umstead, Boswell, and Lake initially entered guilty pleas to the burglary, while Veon steadfastly maintained his innocence, pleaded not guilty and secured his release on a $500 bond.

Veon’s trial began in late April 1935, accompanied by intense local interest in both Tuscarawas County and Salem. His defense attorneys argued that the entire case was a malicious frame-up engineered by Salem’s Police Chief, who was allegedly jealous of Homer Veon’s activities and quick advancement within the department. To further support his innocence, the defense presented an alibi placing Veon at a pottery workers’ wage conference in East Liverpool at the exact time of the crime. As the trial commenced, Victor Lake chose to withdraw his previous plea of guilty, signaling that he too would fight the charges.

The prosecution’s case collapsed suddenly due to a legal technicality during the testimony of the victim. Samuel Knutti described the layout of his dairy and revealed to the court that his cheese cellar was a detached basement structure with no interior entrance or passageway connecting it to his living quarters. Because the grand jury’s indictment specifically charged the alleged perpetrators with breaking and entering an inhabited dwelling, this physical separation meant the charges did not match the crime. Consequently, the county prosecutor was forced to dismiss the indictment, and the judge discharged the jury, leaving the state with plans to seek a corrected indictment for breaking into a storeroom later that fall.

Following the sudden disruption of the trial, the judge showed clemency to the other participants. He suspended the prison sentences of Kenneth Umstead and Clifford Boswell, placing them both on probation for two years, though Boswell was ordered to serve a brief jail sentence for making conflicting sworn statements. The indictment against Victor Lake was quashed, and he was returned to his home county to face separate larceny charges. Because the county prosecutor ultimately decided not to seek a new indictment against Homer Veon, his five-hundred-dollar bond was officially released in August 1935, and he was reinstated to active duty on the Salem police force.

Homer Veon’s return to law enforcement was short-lived, culminating in a dramatic late-night scandal in February 1936. One night that month, Salem’s Safety Director and the Police Chief caught Veon at a local residence with an unnamed woman when he was supposed to be on active patrol. The pair were hauled to a special midnight court convened by the Mayor, Veon and the woman pleaded guilty to a statutory charge and paid a $25 fine. Veon tendered his resignation, and though he attempted to withdraw it days later, the safety director and the civil service commission refused to return his badge.

Following the conclusion of the legal proceedings, the paths of the participants diverged significantly. The victim of the heist, Samuel Knutti, suffered from a decade-long illness that left him bedfast in his final weeks. He passed away on September 17, 1943, at the county home at the age of sixty-nine and was buried in Holmes County. Among the perpetrators, Kenneth Umstead remained in Ohio, eventually passing away in Salem in 1961 at the age of sixty-six. Clifford Boswell married in West Virginia in 1936, resided in various Ohio cities including Massillon, and died in Cuyahoga County in 1975 at the age of sixty-two. Victor Lake continued a life of crime, receiving multiple prison sentences for subsequent grocery store burglaries and parole violations; he died in West Virginia in 1952 at the age of forty-five. Lastly, Homer Veon moved to West Virginia in the late 1930s before permanently relocating to California in 1940, where he lived with his wife until his death in Los Angeles on May 12, 1963, at the age of sixty-seven.

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© Noel B. Poirier, 2026.