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1880 – 2026
The Dice killing, 1880: Ephraim Dice's death outside Hughes' saloon on August 23, 1880, stands in Chapman where the Crime file left it: seven men arrested after the two-day examination before Justice Harbaugh, Charles Kelley and Andrew Pfaffenbach held to bail at $2,000 each, the others discharged, and Chapman closing mid-case. This pass's searches returned Chapman's own text and nothing later, and the published coroner's index carries no entry under Ephraim Dice among its Dice entries. The final disposition is unreached; its routes are the court records of the 1880–81 terms and the Tribune backfile.
The Armstrong pardon campaign: Jay K. Armstrong's case — convicted of the murder of Carrie Vincent at the Grand View Hotel on Vistula Avenue, serving life at Michigan City — stood in August 1913 with his father pressing the State Board of Pardons for a further hearing at the board's September 1913 sitting. This pass's search surfaced nothing on the outcome. Its routes are the Board of Pardons' records and the press after September 1913.
The Christensen detective: Patrolman Oscar Waldemar Christensen was killed on May 11, 1897, in the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway yards. The Indiana Law Enforcement Memorial's page for him, re-read, still does not name the railroad detective: it records "the 36-year-old railroad detective," charged with second-degree murder and, after three trials on a change of venue to LaPorte County, acquitted of manslaughter. The banked file prints the memorial's and ODMP's accounts' difference whole. The name's routes are the LaPorte County court records of 1897–1900 and the LaPorte and South Bend press of those years.
The Greer home invasion, 1995: Michael Greer's aggregate 220 years and Terrance Mitchem's 90 stand affirmed in the banked file. The two things the appellate opinions withhold — the name of the man killed, anonymized in both opinions, and Dorian Lee's separate disposition — were reached by no free source. Their route is the Tribune of June to December 1995, which stands behind a subscription wall.
The long routes, restated: Howard's 1907 history mined past 1880 is a section, not a pull, and was not attempted as one. Prohibition's retail-level raids wait on the Hoosier State Chronicles' News-Times and Tribune runs of 1920–1933, direct fetching of which has repeatedly been refused from this seat. The mid-century cases of 1945–1992 wait on the undigitized Tribune archive and the superior court files. The Tribune's day-of coverage of June 30 – July 1, 1934, stands behind the newspaper archive wall. The 2002 note-pass series stands as banked: no arrest, indictment or sentence naming the series appears in the Department of Justice's or the FBI's published records reached. The modern bank names behind the Jiggetts and Maez prosecutions wait on the federal dockets — Jiggetts is Northern District No. 3:11-CR-00084 — and the one docket route attempted, the CourtListener API, requires authentication from this seat and could not be run.
The serial-killers residue: Four items ride from that file's note, carried here and not re-run: Brian Talboom's age, absent from the Tribune coverage, the prosecutor's release and both appellate opinions reached; the Tribune's 2011 manhole retrospective, identified as the narrative of record but not read in full first-hand; the Texas Rangers' November 2021 unmatched-confession set behind the Samuel Little negative; and Randy Sharp's plea date, fixed to July 2007 from the Tribune's briefs rather than the plea document. This section's negatives are court-and-press-record negatives, and its phrasing is calibrated to that limit.
The excluded pull: The Cortes pull named in the Unsolved note is a FamilySearch-class record. It was deliberately not worked, and it stays logged for the update cycle.
Sources:
- Indiana Law Enforcement Memorial, Patrolman Oscar Waldemar Christensen's officer page — re-read November 10, 2026; the detective unnamed there.
- South Bend Area Genealogical Society, St. Joseph County Coroner's Records Index, D segment — the Dice entries; no Ephraim Dice.
- C. C. Chapman & Co., History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1880), ch. XVI, "Dark Deeds" — the Dice account, as the banked file carries it.