PAULDING COUNTY, Ohio — A new composite sketch of the suspect in the 1960 killing of 14-year-old Paulding girl Nancy Eagleson was released Friday afternoon.
Nancy was abducted while walking home from the movies with her 5-year-old sister, Sheryl, on Nov. 13, 1960. Sheryl jumped on the suspect’s back as he attempted to throw her older sister into the back of his car.
Sheryl told investigators the man was wearing church clothes, a fedora, horn-rimmed glasses and was possibly a little older than her father, who was in his 30s at that time. Sheryl told 11 Investigates she was hypnotized, offered a pony and put under a lot of pressure to identify the man. When the initial composite sketch was released in 1960, the man was not wearing a hat. Sheryl told 11 Investigates that she believed the man’s face was also a little pudgier than in the first sketch.
11 Investigates produced several different leads while investigating the case for a three-night series that aired in February. Most notably, our team discovered a local man who claimed that he believed he could have the murder weapon. He said it was provided to him in 1960 after a man said he had to get rid of it. That weapon, a .22-caliber handgun, was retrieved by a state investigation, but investigators said there were not significant enough markings on the recently discovered bullet to compare it to the gun.
In addition, a former Paulding County sheriff’s deputy, Bud Paulus, was identified as a potential suspect after a Texas woman said she was abused by him as a child. 11 Investigates discovered that Paulus committed suicide in 1987, shortly after being indicted by a grand jury for abusing a family member. We have confirmed with law enforcement that he is considered a potential suspect. At the time of the killing, he was acting as an auxiliary deputy and had recently opened a service station about a quarter-mile from where Nancy was taken.
The abduction took place around 7:30 p.m. on a warm fall evening. Nancy's body was discovered hours later, just outside town. She had been sexually assaulted. The medical examiner initially ruled that she was shot once, but when her body was exhumed late last year, a second bullet was found in her casket. The death was changed to two gunshots from a .22-caliber weapon.
During our investigation, Sheryl told us that she has always been troubled by the initial sketch that has been circulated. She then asked Sheriff Jason K. Landers if it would be possible to produce a different sketch.
A forensic artist with Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation recently completed a composite sketch with Sheryl’s help, which is included below:
There are two sketches, one with facial features and one without facial features, because Sheryl "couldn’t remember the details of his facial features, but didn’t recall age lines or wrinkles. What stuck out to her were his rosy cheeks," according to a press release from the Ohio BCI.
“This man was seared into the memory of a young girl who survived a heinous crime many years ago,” Yost said. “Now, thanks to forensic artistry at BCI, we can see the suspected killer through her eyes and hopefully discover his identity.”
Landers continues to run down leads in the investigation, many of them generated after the 11 Investigates series aired.
“I am grateful Sheryl had the opportunity to make a sketch of what she recalls the man’s features looking like nearly 63 years ago,” Landers said. “Sheryl was only 5 years old at the time of Nancy’s abduction, so after 63 years, it’s hard to clearly recall every detail, but she did great. I am hopeful this sketch will resonate with someone and will contact my office with their tip.”
Anyone with information should call the Paulding County Sheriff's Office at 419-399-3791 or the Ohio Attorney General’s Office Cold Case Unit at 855-224-6446.
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