Note: There does not appear to be consistency in the name Ostram. This is the spelling in all news accounts, as well as prison and parole records. However, some other records use Ostran (with an N) and this is the spelling used on headstones – very much a permanent record. I have decided to use Ostram throughout for consistency, but be aware this may or may not be the preferred spelling.
circa November 1908, Blanche Ledde and Edwin Ostram, both of Liberty Grove, are married. They had six children, including Norman, Leland and Evangeline Ostram. 14-year old Leland passed in 1924 from diabetes. Then father Edwin passed away prematurely in 1926 from appendicitis, leaving Blanche the head of the family and its farm.
June 6, 1928, 18-year old Evangeline Ostram gave birth to an illegitimate girl she had with Matt McOlash. (The family name appears to have been legally Mickolosek up until 1940 when it was changed by a Brown County judge, but no one used it, not even on legal paperwork.) Dr. WA Sneeberger of Ephraim arrived and noted the child was a healthy 7 and a half pounds.
June 8, Blanche tried to get the baby accepted by an orphanage in Green Bay, but were denied. On the way back, they pulled off of Highway 57 on to a side road south of a curve known as “The Pines” near Fairland, and killed the child with carbolic acid. They continued on home and buried the child in a chicken yard behind the Ostram home.
Dr. Sneeberger returned to check up on the baby girl. Evangeline said the child had been brought to an orphanage. Later, Blanche (who had been at a church meeting) called the doctor to inform him that the child had died after choking on a sugar water mixture, and she did not tell her daughter because it would upset her. That same day, McOlash called Sneeberger and said the baby was in an orpahnage, brought by him and Blanche. Because of these conflicting stories, Sneeberger checked with Coroner Elmer C. Christensen, and found no burial permit was issued.
Christensen was suspicious. Authorized by District attorney Grover M. Stapleton, he conducted his own investigation and found the grave near a lilac bush, exhumed the baby (inside a small pasteboard box) with a small shovel and then brought the body to the HJ Hahn undertaking parlor. Mrs. Ostram was aware of this, being told it was necessary to get a proper burial permit. Before allowing him to dig, Blance offered the docor “her property and all her money” if he would leave the baby undisturbed.
Once unveiled, the cause of death was obvious, but to be safe, pathologist Dr. Edward L. Miloslavich from Milwaukee was called in for the autopsy. He was said to have performed over 8,000 autopsies and had recently handled the high profile Greenwaldt(? Maybe Emma Greenwald) case. (He was kind of a big deal – after World War II, he was brought to Poland to analyze a mass grave of 10,000 people.) Miloslavich identified a blow on the head and the telltale signs of carbolic acis – the lower portion of the baby’s stomach was shriveled up and the smell of the acid was still permeating from its lips.
A coroner’s inquest was held a few days later with Sneeberger as the star witness. The jury declared the death a homicide and the two suspects were arrested. The newspaper noted this would be the first murder trial for DA Stapleton and the first murder in Door County in 12 years, the last one being for alleged insane killer Henry Webser(?) of Brussels.
Between the arrest and her preliminary hearing on June 15, Blanche Ostram put the blame on herself and downplayed the role of Matt McOlash. She insisted to Judge Martin Dehos.the trip to Green Bay never happened and the poisoning happened before they ever left. She also downplayed the role of her son Norman, who had admitted to authorities he was the one who buried the baby. Norman also told authorities the Green Bay trip HAD happened, as far as he knew.
June 21, 1928: The Door County News had a short editorial on Blanche Ostram, saying her motives were love and respectability, but the outcome was a bigger disgrace than the one she tried to cover up. The editor concluded, “Fate had decreed that the babe should be brought into this world and it was not for Mrs. Ostram or any other human being to decide whether or not it should again leave.”
By the end of June, Blanche changed her confession and now said the poison was bought on the way back from Green Bay. According to her now, after the orphanage turned them away, McOlash purchased the carbolic acid at a Green Bay drug store and she gave it to the baby on the drive home. The district attorney went to Green Bay and found the store where the poison was sold – it did appear to indicate McOlash was the buyer. At this point, McOlash was represented by attorney Frank G. Weis and they declined to make any further comments.
September 6, 1928: The McOlash case wrapped up and the jury left at 3:30pm. His defense was that he was not in the car when the murder happened and was only told by Blanche after the fact. By 8:00pm the jury returned and told Judge Henry Graass their verdict: guilty.
September 8, 1928: Blanche and McOlash were sentenced by Judge Graass to life in prison. (She seems to have gone to Waupun initially and later transferred to Taycheedah?) Judge Graass expressed at the time of sentence that he did not wish to see either of them spend life in prison, but the statute for first degree murder made that the mandatory sentence. Graass was able to specify they were not to be put in solitary confinement or made to perform hard labor. He said if they sought a pardon from the governor, he would not stand in their way. Prosecutor GM Stapleton likewise did not feel life in prison was appropriate. At sentencing, 75 friends of the two had also signed a petition asking for clemency – Judge Graass said although he could not act on it, he would put it on file for future legal action. The jury, too, specifically asked for leniency and were denied. The newspapers noted this was the first murder trial in Door County in 14 years (the last one was in 1914 and the man was judged insane), and the first time in county history a woman received life.
The morning of September 11, Sheriff Al Osmuson personally drove the pair to Waupun.
October 1932, Blanche and Matt applied for a pardon after four years in prison. Acting as their attorney was RE Evrard. They were denied.
December 1935, Judge HM Ferguson went to the state pardon board on Matt McOlash’s behalf and gave an impassioned speech for the young man. Ferguson declared, “The mother, when taken to the county jail, admitted on two occasions that McOlash had nothing to do with the poisoning, but those who heard the testimony were not given an opportunity to appear before the court. When the mother took the witness stand, however, she changed her testimony and declared that McOlash had held the child’s nose while she poured the carbolic acid down its throat. Here is the peculiar part of that trial. The doctor who performed the post mortem on the infant testified that the infant had not only been poisoned but had received a crushing blow in the back of the head. This testimony was passed over.” Essentially, if the jailhouse witnesses had testified, McOlash might never have even been charged.
Ferguson continued, “He was a simple backwoods boy without much education. He was not a sophisticated city gangster. He lived 45 miles from the railroad, and had lived a spotless life up o the time of this tragedy. Here are signatures of his neighbors attesting to his character and asking clemency for a lad whose whole life is before him and who is suffering for a crime in which he took no part.” Ferguson presented “several hundred” signatures and further added that he had since learned that McOlash had initially taken out a marriage license when he heard about the baby, hoping to “do right,” but Blanche did not want the scandal of a pre-marital baby in her family.
In January 1936, Governor LaFollette reduced Matt McOlash’s sentence from life to a mere 15 years. He was released by the end of the year. We’ll pick up his story in a bit.
On August 5, 1936, Blanche applied for a pardon and in November 1936, the governor reduced Blanche’s sentence from life to 25 years.
June 11, 1937, a hearing was held in Madison on Blanche’s pardon application. The parole board looked at it favorably, and passed on their recommendation to Governor LaFollette. On July 15, he reduced her sentence to a maximum 20 years. Given her good behavior and having served almost 50% of that, it was likely she would be released soon.
In 1958, Norman Ostram, 49, drowned when the 29-foot steel boat he was fishing on sank south of the light house island by Baileys Harbor. Along with him was his fishing partner William Carlson, 34, and 5,000 pounds of shad. Norman left behind a wife and two daughters.
Following her release from prison, Blanche moved to Michigan and was remarried. She lived an apparently uneventful life and passed in 1984. Evangeline was married to Edward Rieth in 1931, and had at least one child. He passed in 1970, and she was married again to Arthur Smith, who passed in 1988. Evangeline herself passed in Sturgeon Bay in 2000. Her child, Arlene, passed in 2012. (There may have been more children – but for the sake of privacy I’m only mentioning people who are no longer with us.)
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Matt McOlash was married to Elaine Sitte of Ellison Bay on September 17, 1938, soon after his release from prison. The couple had three children: Myron, Marvel and Joel. He started out as an oil on the steamship Clemens Reiss and worked his way up to chief engineer for the Red Arrow Steamship Company.
Myron went to UW-Madison where he studied commerce and married Elaine Paske, an engineering teacher.
In June 1965, Matt’s daughter Marvel McOlash was chosen to represent Door County in the annual Alice in Dairyland contest. She was valedictorian of her Gibraltar High School class, member of the National Honor Society, played the saxophone and guitar, and was presently a student at UW-Madison studying medical technology.
Joel married Janet Mae Christensen and settled in Racine.
On December 22, 1991, Matt McOlash passed in Door County – despite going to prison in his youth, he had a successful career and a remarkable family. In a strange way, his story is one of inspiration.
Postscript: Evangeline Ostram and Matt McOlash lived in Door County for over 50 years at the same time. I wonder… did they cross paths again? Did their children know of this murdered half-sibling? It seems inevitable.