Door County Trolley offers new 'Murder & Mayhem Tour'

EGG HARBOR - Murder in wholesome, aesthetically spotless Door County?

You might be surprised.

A.J. Frank, owner of Door County Trolley in Egg Harbor, knew he'd find at least some material for a new, narrated crime tour he introduced to riders this summer.

But diving into the research, he got the shivers from the sheer ferocity of the Peninsula's most infamous villains -- from a killer who stuffed an old woman into a furnace to another who ran his victim through with a samurai sword.

"That's why I called it the 'Murder & Mayhem Tour,' just the brutalness of some of these things," Frank said. "(Guests) are shocked, I was shocked at just the horrific nature of these. It's the darkness behind the magazine picture of Door County."

"Cutting up a body? Stabbing two people 50 times each?" Frank added, mentioning details of two of the six featured crimes. "That's not just murder, that's mayhem."

Fans of Door County can still sleep peacefully. A U.S. News and World Report study last spring pegged the Peninsula's violent crime rate at 49 incidents per 100,000 people, compared to a national median that's more than four times higher.

But in the first few hours after the "Murder & Mayhem" excursion visits a half-dozen crime scenes and winds up around 9:30 p.m., dozing off might prove elusive with so many stories of "debauchery," in Frank's words, creeping around the brain.

The journey along the crime trail has been packing Frank's 29-passenger, 14-windowbank buses since making its debut in mid-June.

"It has been selling out, which is exciting for a new tour; we may have to go to two trips a night," Frank said. "It would (appeal) to people with the same interests as the ghost tours we do (of reputed haunted places). They're different stories, but there's an overlap of customers who like these intriguing tales during the nighttime."

Similarly, the inspiration for the themed tour came to Frank in a nighttime reverie and "popped back into my head" the next morning. He said that's how he gets most of his ideas, from sudden strokes of creativity in the shower, while dreaming or just any old time the muse hits.

"We've done the ghost tours for many years, and they've been showcased in the Chicago Tribune and Midwest Living and have been selling out over and over and over again," Frank said. "But a lot of (guests), after doing it for five years straight ... if you like T-bone, you'll still order the T-bone, but there was some 'Been there, done that.' They said you have to come up with a new tour."

Door County Trolley now has an even dozen types of trips exploring lighthouses, wineries, natural scenery, food joints and other trappings and features of an ever-captivating locale. Most tours occur from Memorial Day to Halloween, but Frank also has offseason rides focusing on winter landscapes or spring blossoms. The "murder" outing is one of two newcomers to the schedule this summer, along with a 30-minute "Family Ride" that hits a number of popular landmarks but is shortened to fit the attention spans of young kids.

The crime tour travels in time from 1948 through the sword slaying that occurred on Christmas Eve 2001.

Among other stops, the tour pulls up at the White Lace Inn bed-and-breakfast on North Fifth Avenue in Sturgeon Bay; the Spruce Court apartment complex in the city; the Coyote Roadhouse saloon and eatery in rural Baileys Harbor; the Peninsula Center intersection of County A and E; and a remote area along the Lake Michigan shipping canal, en route to the U.S. Coast Guard Station southeast of the city. All are either crime scenes themselves or figure significantly into the narratives.

Frank developed scripts for his tour guides/drivers by poring over public law enforcement records and newspaper archives. The trolley cars are careful to remain on public roads and streets, and the group doesn't go barging through the private homes and businesses whose notoriety is no fault of their own, Frank said.

But Frank doesn't anticipate any objections. He has a close relationship with Coyote Roadhouse, which is a stop on his Bloody Mary & Brunch tour and where a wanted killer talked his way out of the authorities' grasp in 1996.

The owners of the White Lace Inn, once a private mansion where the "furnace murder" happened, are aware of their inclusion on the tour, Frank said. He said the innkeepers have come to embrace the story as a fascinating, albeit macabre, part of the renovated Victorian home's backstory, one that spellbinds guests instead of spooking them.

"We're careful how we tell these stories and where we tell them," Frank said. "We're telling it with the windows closed, so the (inn) guests can't hear it. I understand there are still people living in the community (with the legacy of these crimes)."

Like his other branded trips, Frank worked up a unique musical soundtrack that plays on board while the wheels are rolling between stops. The riders ideally catch on to the lyrics, because there's a singalong to the selected tunes at the end, during the otherwise uneventful return trip back to the trolley's base.

The "Murder & Mayhem" soundtrack includes a number of pop pieces about first-degree dirty deeds or which make passing references to death and homicide.

The "Murder & Mayhem Tour" hits the road from Door County Trolley, 8030 State 42, about a mile north of Egg Harbor, at 6:30 p.m. Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays through Sept. 1, then Fridays and Saturdays through Oct. 27. Departure time in October will be 5:30. Cost is $29.95 for adults and $21.95 for children; ages 9 and younger are nmot allowed. For reservations (recommended), call 920-868-1100 or visit doorcountytrolley.com.

April 2, 1948: The furnace murder

The first recorded murder in Sturgeon Bay history saw William Drews, 54, strike elderly widow Sadie E. Cody unconscious at her home at what is now the White Lace Inn in Sturgeon Bay, then cremate her lifeless body by stuffing it into a 2-by-3 foot stove. Drews stole $110 and then blithely went ahead with his planned wedding the next day, spending the loot on flowers and drinks. The fact that Drews chose to burn the body revived suspicions that he murdered his first wife, who died in 1946 in what might have been made to look like a fiery car crash. But he was never charged in the first death.

June 29, 1953: Advocate owners' double-murder

James Duranty, just 15 but already 6 feet and 180 pounds, strangled and hacked to death Door County Advocate editor/publisher Sumner Harris and his wife and business partner, Grace, at their home on Michigan Street. Grace was slain first at about 7:30 in the evening and Sumner when he rushed home, lights in the newsroom still burning, about two hours later. Duranty stole the Harrises' car but was caught sleeping in the basement of a Shelbyville, Ind., courthouse with a dollar left in his pocket. The local sheriff deduced he was on to more than a vagrant when he found the Harrises' vehicle nearby and recalled a story in the Indianapolis Star about a double-murder in Wisconsin.

March 11, 1955: Canal Shack killing

Recluse Donald Crass, 44, died from a shotgun blast to the face at his cabin in what was then timberland along the road leading to the U.S. Coast Guard's Sturgeon Bay station and lighthouse. Crass was rumored to be saving money, keeping stashes of cash and bonds at his ramshackle abode. That was the apparent motive for triggerman Alvin J. Polcen and two other men implicated in the murder after a day of drinking in Sturgeon Bay. Polcen also shot and killed Crass' collie-shepherd mix dog. One of the men, Harrison Motquin, claimed to have fallen asleep in the car outside and was offered money by Polcen to keep him quiet.

Nov. 1996: David Dellis manhunt

Dellis is in prison for killing -- perhaps accidentally -- Michael Lee Kasee, 15, in suburban Green Bay and then carving up the body with a chainsaw and dumping the remains at a southern Door County farm. A weeklong manhunt ensued and kept Door County and the surrounding region on edge. He hid in the basement of a Baileys Harbor home for two or three days before emerging Nov. 22 to threaten the owners with a crowbar, tie them up and steal their truck. But the couple worked themselves free and called the cops. Dellis led police on a chase but had nowhere to go because Sheriff Charles Brann ordered the two Sturgeon Bay bridges (at that time) opened to, in effect, trap him on an island. He was put in cuffs on State 57 north of Sturgeon Bay.

Dec. 1998 to May 1999: Peninsula Center fires

Barely two years after the anxiety of the Dellis search, Door County was again gripped by fear, this time over the possibility that a serial arsonist was on the loose. Within a matter of months, fires leveled the new Stone's Throw Winery and old Peninsula Pub. Then in May 1999, a storage building behind the winery went up in flames as well. The first two blazes were called probable electrical fires by investigators. But the third one was clearly set on purpose, because the building had neither wiring nor stored combustibles and the fire burned extraordinarily hot. The mystery deepened when a possible suspect, Daniel Wolff of Baileys Harbor, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot at the Peninsula Center crossroads -- police ruled it a suicide, at least.

Dec. 24, 2001: Sword stabbing

The last murder to occur within Sturgeon Bay began with buddies Steve "Ozone" Owens and John Zelhofer cracking open a bottle of brandy for a day of drinking on Christmas Eve. It ended with Owens, 40, running his friend through with a Japanese martial arts sword at Owens' apartment atop the Spruce Street hill on the city's west side. The two men had been arguing over U.S. retaliation for the 9/11 terror attacks three months earlier. Owens said he meant only to strike a threatening pose with his sword to end the dispute, but grew enraged when Zelhofer simply laughed at him.