Dan Melchior grew up hearing the story of Rudolph Ziemerโs death. Learning the full scope decades later changed his life. The Harrison High School graduate knew three paratroopers from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, beat Ziemer โ an openly gay man โ to death in 1963, then rolled his body and car into the Ohio River. Melchior knew about his familyโs connection to Ziemer because he often took his clothes to Melchiorโs grandfatherโs dry-cleaning business. He didnโt know Ziemerโs assailants got away with their crime โby essentially smearing him and moving the trial to Boonville, where they were assured an all-white, all-male jury,โ he says.
โThe case divided the city โ half the people believed the paratroopers were heroes, and half said you canโt just kill someone. It divided my family, too,โ says Melchior, now the director of shared services at San Diego State University in California.
Melchior pieced together information over nearly four years. He workshopped his findings as his thesis for a Master of Arts at Marylandโs Johns Hopkins University. Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library collections director Kate Linderman found newspaper articles about the case. Boonville court reporter Sarah Ellard Stephens discovered the trial was audio recorded; the book contains transcripts.
โIn the fabric of society, all these things are connected,โ Melchior says.
In โThe Silk Finisher: Bigotry, Murder, and Sacrifice in the Crossroads of America,โ Melchior lays bare a cityโs divided conscience and how Ziemerโs death and the corresponding court case remain culturally relevant.
The experience, he says, was โa journey of discovery for me.โ
โI learned things about my family that I never knew,โ Melchior says. โThat makes you find out things about yourself and understand why things happened the way they did in your family.โ
