Mary Susan Jacobs Carter:1980, Hyde Park, Ohio

   

  On Saturday, August 16th, 1980 a woman named Faye Estepp saw two preschool children wandering down her road. They had dusty tear stained faces. They were upset and hungry so she began caring for them and called the police for help. 

  These were not children from her neighborhood. She thought they had gotten lost. She hoped police would help them find their mother and father. 

  When the police arrived they gathered more information from the children and they did find the children’s mother. She was face down at the end of a dirt road and she had been strangled. 

  Mary Susan Jacobs was born on January 15th, 1959 to Fran and George Jacobs. 

  Mary married Richard Carter Jr. on January 31st, 1976 when she was 17 and he was 21. She dropped out of Colerain High School to get married. The couple had two children, Shawn and Elizabeth. 

   Mary and Richard separated in April of 1980. She and her children moved back home to her mother’s house. Later she and the children moved into a rented apartment at 3537 Vista Avenue in Hyde Park in the southeast part of Cincinnati. Mary found a job waiting tables. 

    On August 16th, 1980, Mary and the kids were heading out to visit her Mom in Hamilton. They were walking to a bus stop near Vista and Madison in Hyde Park when a man offered them a ride. They accepted that ride from the man in a dark blue pickup truck with a wide white stripe down the side. 

  The man was described as having dark hair, a bushy dark moustache, and hairy arms. 

   But, he didn’t take Mary and her two young children to her mother’s house up in Hamilton, northeast of Cincinnati. They ended up near 1000 Eastern Avenue in a wooded area not terribly far from her Hyde Park home. 

    He strangled and assaulted Mary Susan Carter and left her children with her dead body. The children thought their mother was asleep. They tried to wake her. They screamed and cried and then they started walking to find a grown up who might help them. Shawn was only 4 but he kept his little sister with him and sought help. 

   The children were found wandering by Faye Estepp and were washed up and fed. 2 year old Elizabeth  had some dried blood on her hand from a cut. The children were otherwise not physically harmed. 

  I think her killer was Ralph Richard Howell. One woman escaped an attack by Howell. This is the victim’s description of what happened: The victim said she was on the side of the road with car trouble. Ralph Richard Howell pulled over and offered her a ride. He was in a truck that delivered bulk shipments of Cincinnati Enquirer newspapers. She refused but he kept insisting. He said things like “I’m not an animal. I won’t hurt you. You don’t have to be afraid.”  The coercive goading wore her down and so she got in. 

  As soon as she was in the truck, he had a rope around her neck and was strangling her. She fought. She also managed to frantically talk to him and beg for her life. She also asked him if he had a wife. He said yes. She asked if he would want someone to do this to his wife. He said no.  He eventually let her out. She went to the police and reported her story. He was charged with abduction and attempted rape but plead down to only a misdemeanor of unlawful restraint. He faced no serious consequences. Even though law enforcement knew that Cincinnati had many unsolved strangling victims…they didn’t investigate him in 1983 for any additional crimes. 

   That coercive and manipulative way of offering a ride to the survivor makes me think that Howell employed that same tactic on Mary Susan Carter. 

   He died in 1985 in a car accident in Kentucky.  I wonder if he was alone in that car accident. Was he with a struggling victim when he wrecked? I haven’t found any reporting of the accident. 

  Howell was found to be responsible for Cheryl Perkins’ 1978 murder. He is thought to be responsible for the murders of Victoria Hinscher (Uchniat), Nancy Ann Theobald and many others. I believe he killed Cheryl A. Hughes.  She was abducted from Chillicothe, Ohio in 1977 and her body was dumped just over the river in Kentucky. 

  Mary Susan Jacobs Carter was only 21 when she was strangled and assaulted and left face down on a dirt road. Her two children were extremely traumatized and left without a mother. Mary never got to raise her children. She didn’t get to pursue a career or further study. Her entire future was stolen from her. 

 Mary Susan Jacobs Carter was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Glendale, Ohio. 

  Rest in Peace Mary