Badge:  D1
Age: 49
Served 26 years
May 1, 1929 to September 19, 1955

Lemuel Trotter (28) of Shubuta, Mississippi, Robert Lee Jackson (40) of 623 W. 6th Street, Cincinnati, Willie Barnett (24) of 507 Carlisle Avenue, Cincinnati, met in Kilby Prison where they were incarcerated for various offenses.  On September 19, 1955, all three were in Cincinnati and planned to rob the Grey Eagle Café and its customers at 201 W. 6th Street in District 2.   At 11:50 p.m., Trotter, carrying a Smith & Wesson .38 caliber revolver, and Barnett, carrying a .32 caliber semiautomatic pistol, went inside the café. Jackson waited outside as a lookout. 

Walter Hart, a late-life baby, lost his father, John Hart, as a child.  He and his mother, Mary Hart, were taken in by a Cincinnati Patrolman, Frank H. Menkhaus, at 1724 Denham.  When Walter came of age, he joined the Cincinnati Police Division and moved next door with his new wife, Lillian, to 1720 Denham.  By 1935, after only five years in the Police Division, Walter was promoted to detective.  For the next 21 years, he was assigned to the Homicide Squad.  Among his many cases, he was a principle investigator in the Anna Marie Hahn case.  He and his wife were friends of the owners of the Grey Eagle Café.  By 1955, the Harts lived in Westwood.  On September 19, 1955, on his way home, he stopped in the Grey Eagle and was there talking to its owner at 11:50 p.m. when Trotter and Barnett walked in. 

After announcing the robbery, Trotter and Barnett herded the customers into a restroom.  Detective Hart went into the restroom as if he were just a customer.  Once all were relatively safe inside, Detective Hart went to leave the restroom to face the robbers.  The customers protested his plan, but he knew they would be in to rob them when the finished in the bar.  He walked out of the restroom with his Colt Police Positive .38 caliber revolver.  During the ensuing shootout, he wounded Barnett, but Trotter shot him in the chest and through the heart knocking him to the floor.  The robbers fled the café.  Detective Hart got up, staggered to the telephone, tried calling for help, collapsed, and died.  

Patrolmen George Reese, Highway Safety Bureau, and Wilson Day, District 2, heard the shots, responded to the café, and found Detective Hart.  They had him rushed to Cincinnati General Hospital, but he was pronounced dead on arrival by Dr. Goettle at 12:36 a.m. 
Detective Hart left a wife, Lillian, and two grown children.  He is buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery in St. Bernard.

Patrolmen Reese and Day canvassed the area and found and apprehended the wounded Barnett in a hallway at 229 West 6th Street.  Detectives Marvin Friedman and John Ritter responded and recovered at that address personal papers and money belonging to victims robbed in the café.  Barnett was charged with 1st Degree Murder.  He claimed insanity and declared incompetent to stand trial and was removed to the Lima State Hospital for the criminally insane.  Suddenly, during 1972 and after Ohio’s death penalty was abolished, doctors at Lima State Hospital determined Barnett to be capable of standing trial.  A ruling was forthcoming in December 1972.  We do not know what that ruling was, but he died in the Lima State Hospital.

Jackson fled the scene to his home, four blocks west on 6th Street.  He changed clothes and caught a cab.  Patrolmen William Breckel and William Hayes, District One, conducted stops of vehicles going over the C&O Bridge.  They stopped the cab Jackson had caught, identified him as a suspect, and arrested him.  Patrolman Harry Batters, Vice Squad, Patrolman Lehman Foster, District Four, and Detectives John Greene, Eugene Moore and Donald F. Roney, Crime Bureau, recovered the murder weapon and Detective Hart’s wallet in Jackson’s apartment.  Jackson was found guilty of 1st Degree Murder with a recommendation of no mercy.  He was executed July 7, 1958, almost three years after the murder.

Trotter fled the café through a side door and through an alley.  He caught a cab and went to 1543 Baymiller Street and changed clothes.  From there he went to Newport, Kentucky, jumped onto a freight train, and traveled to Mobile, Alabama.   Using the name Reco Glover, he was apprehended February 8, 1957, in Selma, Alabama.  Lieutenant Charles Martin, Crime Bureau, interviewed Trotter and extradited him to Cincinnati.  Trotter was found guilty of 1st Degree Murder with a recommendation for no mercy.  He was executed July 7, 1958, almost three years after the murder.

Two bronze busts of Detective Hart were sculpted by Patrolman Elmer Robisch.  One is still displayed at the Hart Pharmacy at 4861 Glenway Avenue.  The other is on display on the Memorial Wall of the Greater Cincinnati Police Museum.

If you have further information, artifacts, or pictures of this officer, please contact the Museum Director at Director@GCPHS.com.