The homicide of Oelman, the daughter of former National Cash Register Co. chairman Robert Schantz Oelman, remains unsolved, despite 15 years of investigation. Sugarcreek Twp. police worked on it for years, though now the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation is the lead agency.
“She was very private, very professional, respectful of others,” said BCI special agent Karen Rebori. “Would she meet the norm of being a homicide victim? Probably not.”
Oelman, 47, was a nature lover who lived in the deep woods, in a family cabin on 47 acres along the Little Miami River. Except for a bit of the roof, the cabin was not visible from the road. The property was marked by a rusty mailbox opposite a gravel lane.
“It was difficult to find,” Rebori said. “My first time, I passed it up.”
The house had been originally purchased as a retreat from the family home in Oakwood, though Oelman owned it outright at the time of her death. She worked out of her house as a media liaison for the National Center of Homeopathy in Alexandria, Va. Homeopathy is a medical specialty that uses natural medicines made from animal, vegetable and mineral substances.
On Sept. 7, 1997, two friends went to Oelman’s home after she failed to arrive at an event in Columbus. They found Oelman’s body on her bed. She was nude, lying face down.
Authorities found that she died from blunt force trauma to the back of the head, and Oelman is believed to have been killed two days earlier, according to the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.
“It still is shocking,” said Susan Zurcher, a friend of Oelman’s who added, “I think about Martha quite often. When you rip the scabs off it is still sore under there.”
At the time of the homicide, Sugarcreek police said that the cabin did not appear to be ransacked, that there were no indications of sexual assault, and that investigators did not know what object had been used to kill Oelman.
Rebori declined to answer specific questions about the evidence, citing the open investigation, but said investigators had looked at several possible suspects.
“We’ve looked at different people,” she said. “We have looked at multiple theories.”
BCI has been involved in the investigation since 1999, when Rebori was one of two agents assigned to it. She said they still work on it when they get new information, but have been stymied by the fact that some people have seemed to be afraid to have gotten involved.
Zurcher said she has heard that some of Oelman’s friends have declined to cooperate with law enforcement, which she finds appalling.
“You don’t want to help Martha get justice?” asked Zurcher, who added that she had been interviewed by police several times and never objected.
Zurcher remembered her friend as a nature lover and used the same word Brad Oelman did to describe her: Gentle. She loved to read and cook, and considered her property to be a nature preserve.
“She really loved the environment and wanted to protect it,” Zurcher said.
Brad Oelman still remembers the baby sister, 10 years his junior, who followed him around when he delivered his Dayton Daily News paper route. He last saw Martha on a family vacation in Massachusetts just weeks before her death.
“Justice will eventually be done,” he said. “We’d like to see it done in the person’s life, not afterward.”
Perhaps the most painful part of Oelman’s death was that her parents outlived her, he said. They were in their late 80s at the time and have since died without obtaining answers as to who killed their youngest child or why.
Brad Oelman said he had to deliver the news via the telephone, as his parents had retired and moved to Florida. Oelman told his father, but then his father told him that Brad would have to tell his mother – that he couldn’t deliver that news to his wife.
“I don’t know that my dad ever recovered from the blow he received,” Brad Oelman said. “He was crushed by it. It was staggering to him.”
Anyone with information about the slaying of Martha Oelman is asked to call the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation at 1-855-BCI-OHIO.
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