Friday, September 12, 2008

The death of Jerry Siegel's father: part 2 of 3

At least four documents show that Michael Siegel (father of Jerry Siegel, co-creator of Superman) died not from gunfire as stated in Men of Tomorrow and elsewhere but from a heart attack during a robbery of his clothing store in 1932. Earlier, I posted one of those documents, the coroner's report.

Here is the first page of the second, the police report. I am not posting the second and third pages—to see those (as well as the third document, the death certificate), you will have to wait until my friend Brad Ricca's book comes out. As for why I am doing it this way, see below.


property of the Police Department, City of Cleveland

Page 1 (above) is titled Casualty Report. It specifies "heart failure." Here is my best shot at a transcription of the rest:

"when Michael Siegel became excited when three unknown Negroes entered his store at 3530 Central Ave and one of them walked out with a suit of clothes. through the excitement Michael Siegel fainted and fell down on the floor causing his death"

Page 2 is titled Criminal Complaint. Page 3 is Departmental Information. They both have some great details so check Brad's blog for announcements.

Obtaining this police report was a fortunate fluke. Before Brad and I discussed the police report, he had already tried to get it. The police department told him if he could find it, he could have a copy. (Apparently, and oddly, they could not find it.)

Meanwhile, when I requested the coroner's report, which set me back 20 cents, I was told that the police report was attached to the coroner's report, but the coroner's office was allowed to send me only the coroner's report. I asked Brad if he could ask his police contact to authorize the coroner to send him the police report
—and it worked. Teamwork triumphed, problem solved, report received.

Concluded in part 3.

IFWBC - LSR.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The twenty cents still gets me. In fact, I think I still owe them myself (oops). But Marc was definitely the one to find these documents even existed -- and it was not that they were just in a file or something, it really was an incredible stroke of luck (any such thing?) that they were even around in the first place. I had given up on them some time ago.

Brad

darkmark said...

Looks like one line is "(?) the EXCITEMENT Michael Siegel fainted..."

Marc Tyler Nobleman said...

darkmark - Think so! Will amend. Thanks.