Every second Tuesday of each month, a unique group gathers with an appetite for intrigue. They arrive at 5:30 pm to Waynesboro’s Parlor House Restaurant, anticipating a taste of true crime. They’re known as the ‘Potomac Street Irregulars’, a name derived from a legendary detective. After dinner, local stories from humanity’s seedier side are presented and then discussed, a final course to a distinctive evening.
The Potomac Street Irregulars (PSI) is a public study group created by Todd Dorsett in 2013. Dorsett is Executive Director of the Antietam Historical Association (AHA) and he serves as moderator for monthly PSI events. These programs offer glimpses into the mysterious and sometimes tragic realm of the region’s criminal past. Within this unique format, murders and unexplained deaths always draw greatest attention, but PSI has also investigated bank robbers, counterfeiters, and a spinster wielding a poison pen.
At a recent meeting, three-dozen PSI attendees convened at communal tables in the Parlor House banquet room. While regular diners seated in the next room likely discussed mundane aspects of day-to-day lives, this curious PSI crowd prepared to delve into the chronicles of criminality.
Servers delivered dinner entrees in the brightly lit room. Seated at a table next to the podium, a man devoured a plate of liver and onions. He chatted with a woman who drizzled ranch dressing on a Chef Salad. Later, as dinner plates were cleared, the room’s audible buzz ebbed as the latest proceeding of the Potomac Street Irregulars commenced.
That evening, Todd Dorsett delegated his typical moderator duties to assume the role of presenter. The case he offered to PSI diners: ‘Death at Shangri-La’. Dorsett first established the crime scene. On Wednesday, March 7, 1945, an employee at the Shangri-La Auto Court discovered a woman’s nude body inside a vacation cottage. The roadside tourist destination was located on Molly Pitcher Highway, south of Greencastle. The deceased was found lying across the foot of a bed, covered from shoulders to ankles with a sheet and blanket. An empty whiskey bottle rested by her head, a spent wine bottle lay on the floor.
Two days earlier, a man and woman registered at the Shangri-La as husband and wife. After their check-in, the lady wasn’t seen outside the cottage. A chamber maid spied the woman in bed on Tuesday, apparently asleep. At midday Wednesday, her male companion was seen leaving the rented cottage, alone in his vehicle. Later in the afternoon he returned, but then left again. That time a second man, much younger, was spotted with the registered male guest. The observant maid also noticed the cottage’s windows had been raised.
After the tragic discovery, Pennsylvania State Police investigated the death at Shangri-La. They immediately found the missing man’s signature was illegible on the motel’s registry. Police began searching for him, along with the other guy seen in the car, based on a license plate number on a 1926 Chevrolet.
Meanwhile, the Franklin County Coroner performed an autopsy on the unidentified woman’s remains, and found no evidence of violent death. A blood sample and stomach contents were taken to a Waynesboro lab for analysis. The Coroner also impaneled a jury for an inquest into the woman’s sudden demise.
At noon on Friday, the two men sought by authorities voluntarily surrendered. They were Fletcher Jackson Folden, aged 39, and Leroy Adam West, 21, both of Fayetteville. Folden, the man who rented the cottage, identified the dead woman as Lucy Donovan of Martinsburg, West Virginia. Folden admitted they had registered as a married couple. But Folden’s true wife was subsequently found by police.
After State Police questioned a family member of Donovan’s, it was learned the deceased was also married- to an Army soldier named Campbell. The recently perished black-haired/blue-eyed Donovan-Campbell was Virginia born in 1917, and aged 28 years when she died.
Potential suspect Leroy West was released from jail, pending the inquest, but Jack Folden remained in custody.
During the inquest, the Waynesboro chemist testified no poison was found in Campbell’s body, but she had a highly elevated blood-alcohol level. Slight brush-burns were noted on the corpse’s cheek. The autopsy also uncovered an infection in the deceased’s lungs.
Folden also gave his testimony, admitting after he picked up Campbell in Martinsburg, the two purchased whiskey and wine, and ended shacked-up at the Shangri-La. But Folden swore under oath Campbell was alive when he last saw her. Folden also admitted he’d been intimate with Campbell, a woman not his wife.
West testified he was invited to the cottage by Folden. Later, after chatting with Campbell, West claimed he bathed her. After this odd ritual, West and Folden left Campbell, claiming she was simply hung-over, and the pair drove to Hagerstown for a drinking binge. Presenter Dorsett raised his eyebrows at these details.
Throughout his presentation, Dorsett explained the Shangri-La case concisely, without being overly morbid or dramatic. Like other well-prepared PSI presenters, (which has included FBI Agents and other speakers recruited through the Intelligence sources), Dorsett thoroughly researched this case, gleaning information from old newspaper archives, court documents, and through other investigative techniques. Dorsett’s demonstration concluded with open questions and an unforeseen final decree in the case.
In most situations, PSI only reviews cases when the victims, perpetrators, and all others involved are deceased. One notable exception was a notorious incident involving Peggy Ann Bradnick- a young woman abducted in 1966 by a mysterious ‘mountain man’ in Shade Gap, PA. Near the 50th anniversary of this crime, Bradnick was present on a four-person PSI panel that discussed her kidnapping, which at the time resulted in one of the largest manhunts in Pennsylvania history. While Miss Bradnick was eventually rescued after seven harrowing days, the event was also tragic for Terry Anderson, an FBI Agent murdered while pursuing abductor William Hollenbaugh, who was later shot dead as well.
Also on hand for that PSI panel discussion was Ken Pfeiffer, a photographer and journalist who covered the famous kidnapping. AHA published a book of Pfeiffer’s images and recollections from that event, titled ‘Trail of Terror’. Antietam Historical Association has also published two volumes of PSI cases, a synopsis of their most popular monthly presentations. These intriguing books highlight many unique stories, including the murder of Betty Jane Kennedy.
Kennedy was an 18-year-old woman strangled and found alongside Old Route 16 in Washington Township during April, 1946. That horrific crime was never solved. But tantalizing clues are still contemplated 78 years later, which include reported confessions- one on a deathbed- but still no arrests. PSI revisits this case each spring, and it remains the most significant crime in the group’s theatre of discussion. This year, PSI reached a consensus the Kennedy murder likely wasn’t committed by a serial killer. Perhaps through the group’s persistence and curiosity, this cold case might eventually be solved.
Revisiting the night of Dorsett’s Shangri-La presentation- after wrapping up the case’s surprising legal conclusion- he encouraged discussion among PSI attendees. Dorsett suggested questions lingered about Folden and West, including their unusual corroborating stories, and strange behavior near the time of Campbell’s demise. Was the death scene staged? Why was the young woman bathed by stranger West and not by her illicit lover Folden? Could Campbell be a victim of a homicide or manslaughter?
The PSI crowd discussed how State Police handled the investigation and speculated about some of its unproven aspects. They agreed modern forensics could now pinpoint the time of Campbell’s death, a fact never clearly established in the Shangri-La case. Regarding Folden and West’s actions, Dorsett said: “I’m suspicious. There seems to be more to this case.”
Back in 1945, authorities convicted Folden of only one crime: Adultery. He was issued a $10 fine and sentenced to four months in the county jail. He stayed married to his wife, and fathered two sons. Dorsett’s thorough program tracked Folden’s remaining life in Chambersburg until his eventual death. Leroy West was not charged and eventually left the area. He later married several times, ran a nightclub near a southern military base, and died in Kentucky.
The unofficial conclusion by Dorsett and PSI members on this night leaned toward other criminal acts- ones more serious than adultery- that were possibly committed by these two men, the last people who saw young Lucy Donovan-Campbell alive. Her official cause of her death was ruled a combination of pneumonia, alcohol intake, and exhaustion.
For the next upcoming PSI event on Tuesday, May 14, the group welcomes speaker Jefferson Boyer, a historian from Smithsburg, Maryland. He will discuss the criminal hijinks of a Prohibition-era goodtime gal from South Mountain. Admission to this event is free (attendees select and pay for their own meal), and is open to the public. Reservations can be made by calling Antietam Historical Association: 717-762-2006.
The Potomac Street Irregulars were named as a clever nod to the fictional sleuth Sherlock Holmes. In author Arthur Conan Doyle’s books, the Holmes character is assisted by a group of street people who collect information. This imaginary London group was deemed the ‘Baker Street Irregulars’. Today, PSI enthusiasts strive to live up to Holmes’ investigative heritage, exploring a new chapter in local history each month at Parlor House’s Potomac Street eatery.
When mankind’s darker desires inspire bad behavior and create notorious local events- no matter how far back into history- PSI investigates their outcomes. Those tales hopefully end with proper justice for the victims and just punishment for perpetrators of true crime.
