Edward Vreeland, in the Wauwatosa jail for vagrancy, had been camping out earlier in the summer near where Buddy Schumacher's body was found. Vreeland also had been identified as someone who had given local boys trouble.
Shortly after the body was found, police brought Vreeland in front of the boys who had ridden the train with Buddy the day he disappeared. Two of the boys identified Vreeland as the man who chased them from the train.
Vreeland, who was said to be deeply religious and slept with a Bible under his pillow, admitted that since he had been kicked in the head by a horse long ago, he sometimes suffered from memory lapses, which meant he sometimes had no recollection of what he'd done.
Meanwhile, the handkerchief that had been stuffed down Buddy's throat was identified from photographs as a handkerchief that Wauwatosa's Mrs. George Abel had washed for Vreeland some time ago.
If any case seemed to be a slam dunk, this was it. But soon, the case against Edward Vreeland fell apart, one piece at a time.
Witnesses change stories
First, the handkerchief and Buddy's clothing came up missing for a few days. They were found in District Attorney Eugene Wengert's safe, where they had been placed 'unknown to officials.' When the handkerchief, which had the letter 'A' embroidered on it, was shown to Mrs. Abel, she did not identify it as the one she'd washed for Vreeland.
Meanwhile, Buddy's companions changed their minds after talking with Vreeland at the jail. No, he wasn't the man they saw chase them from the train.
The limitations of crime-fighting technology at the time pretty much left police with nothing more to go on regarding Vreeland. With the only compelling evidence against Vreeland in the case of Buddy's murder dried up, police were forced to let him go.
Convicted child killer confesses
In the middle of October, the warden at a prison in Stillwater, Minn., summoned Milwaukee police detective Adolph Kraemer to question a man who had just been convicted of killing an 11-year-old boy in St. Paul. William Brandt, a 21-year-old former Milwaukee newspaper delivery boy, had just been given a life sentence for the murder of Francis Pioletti.
The warden had noticed some similarities between the Pioletti and Schumacher murders, but Brandt denied any knowledge of Buddy's murder to Kraemer. This seemed to be another dead end in the search for Buddy's killer. But about five weeks later, Brandt confessed to the killing.
'I guess I killed that boy in Milwaukee,' Brandt was quoted in a United Press story. 'I do not remember killing him. But I remember being with him, and I remember hiding the body.'
There you go. Case solved.
Confessions at odds with facts
Not so fast.
Additional questioning by Milwaukee police showed that some details in Brandt's story didn't match up with the facts of the case. And when shown a photograph of Brandt, Buddy's companions were unable to identify him.
Another twist in the tale came in early December as another man confessed to murdering Buddy.
Frank Stencel, who was awaiting sentencing in Bryan, Ohio, for breaking into a New York Central Railroad station in nearby Stryker, said he strangled Buddy. Police also doubted this story. And Stencel changed his mind on the matter following a visit by the Milwaukee police, claiming he'd read of the murder in newspapers.
Both Brandt and Stencel were said to have limited mental capabilities and were called 'morons' in the papers of the day.
For a time, other murders of children in the area sparked some hope that Buddy's killer might be found and brought to justice. But nobody was ever charged with the murder.
Buddy's parents move on
Buddy's grave sits near the highest point of the Wauwatosa Cemetery, close to his parents.
About two years after he passed away, Art and Florence had a house built at what was then 176 Center St., which became 8118 Hillcrest Drive in 1932 when Milwaukee County's house-numbering and street-naming system was revamped.
Florence was so saddened by the murder that she and Art accepted their nephew, Gaylord Armstrong, into the house and raised him as a surrogate son.
'I do not know how Grandfather and Grandmother coped and wonder what they would think of bringing the past into the present,' said Brian Egloff, Buddy's nephew.
One of the positive results of the murder was that the city of Wauwatosa cleaned up the area where Buddy was found and eventually created a park there, Keith Egloff recalled his mother telling him.
No DNA evidence to analyze
Even with updated technology today, the chances of proving who killed Buddy are remote at best.
Seven years ago, Wauwatosa police used DNA technology to solve a murder that took place in 1958, the oldest such case by far to come through the State Crime Laboratory in Milwaukee to that date. But the circumstances were much different in Buddy's case than in the rape and murder of 57-year-old Edna Mauch in her home in the 4100 block of North 98th Street.
When Mauch's case was re-opened, Tosa police still had the clothes she was wearing at the time of the attack and the bed sheets on which she was killed, so they were able to get DNA samples left by the attacker. The alleged killer, John Joseph Watson, was still alive, too, and police were able to obtain a DNA sample from him, which matched the DNA from the clothing and sheets.
In Buddy's case, any physical evidence is apparently gone, as the Wauwatosa police don't have any files that old, and all the suspects are dead.
Questions remain unanswered
After all this time, there are many questions left unanswered:
• Who was the man who vowed to 'get even' with Art Schumacher, and what was it that caused him to threaten the man?
• How long had Buddy's body been left in the woods before it was discovered?
• Is it possible that the body was elsewhere while the area was scoured by hundreds of people and dogs and placed there later?
• Was the handkerchief that was found in the district attorney's desk the same one as the one extracted from the boy's throat?
• Why did Buddy's companions change their minds after identifying Edward Vreeland?
• Why would two men confess to the crime and police doubt either of them did it?
• Why was there no mention of the case in the Wauwatosa News after the story of Nov. 26, 1925, that told of Brandt's confession, despite subsequent stories being published in papers statewide?
• Did the local authorities really know who killed Buddy?
• If there was some sort of cover-up, why?
And, of course, the biggest question of all: Who did kill little Buddy Schumacher?