Eighty years ago, someone got away with murder in Ypsilanti.

Richard Streicher Jr., a 7-year-old boy, went out sledding on a late winter evening never to return. He was found days later underneath a footbridge over the Huron River with 14 stab wounds. Officials initially thought it might be the work of a "sex maniac" or some other local "degenerate."

Despite a Michigan-wide murder probe in the days, weeks and months that followed, a motive was never determined, the weapon never found, the case never solved.

All those involved in the case -- the police officers, judges, prosecutors, the boy's family and likely the murderer himself -- are gone now. All that remains is one of Washtenaw County's coldest murder cases.

Missing boy

Streicher was the only son of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Streicher, who lived at 404 North Huron in Ypsilanti. The boy's father was employed at the Streicher Tool and Die Co., which was probably owned by his father-in-law, Theodore Mueller, a wealthy and prominent auto engineer who lived near Scott Lake in Pontiac.

Mrs. Streicher last saw her son around 4:30 p.m. March 7, when he said he was going outside to play in the snow.

The boy grabbed his sled, which was always tilted against the side of the house in a specific way, and went to play on a nearby hill.

It was hours before his parents discovered he hadn't come home.

"That evening, his parents were having an argument," said James Mann of the Ypsilanti Historical Society. "They then realized Richard was no where to be found."

Mann said the boy's parents borrowed a car and went looking for him. They also searched nearby Island Park, which is what Frog Island Park was called then. Mann said the Streichers crossed the new concrete footbridge over the Huron River to get there.

It was the same bridge where their dead, frozen son would be found the next day.

Frozen body

Thirteen-year-old Buck Holt, a Central High School student, was crossing the main bridge on Cross Street the next day around 1 p.m. with his younger brother when he saw small tracks in the snow.

"Thinking it was a muskrat track ... Buck followed it and discovered the body of Richard lying well under the bridge on a ledge of earth which has only about two feet clearance from the top of the footbridge," The Ann Arbor News reported at the time.

The number of times 7-year-old Richard Streicher Jr. was stabbed changes in news stories. Authorities initially said he'd been stabbed six times and once in the neck. Later reports, after the autopsy, say the boy was stabbed as many as 14 times.

It also appeared he'd been beaten on the head. Since there was no significant blood under the bridge, police worked with the theory he'd been killed elsewhere and the body moved there. Since it was frozen, officials conjectured the body had gone in the river at some point before being placed under the bridge.

"Police found that the body was frozen in place," Mann said. "Their theory was that the killer originally carried him down to the river, changed his mind for whatever reason, then carried him back up - the body was soaking wet - and placed it underneath the pedestrian bridge where it was frozen to the ground."

'Sex maniac' is sought

A day later, on March 9, The Ann Arbor News published a story with the headline: 'Sex maniac' is sought in boy's murder'.

Washtenaw County prosecutor Albert Rapp told The News that the multiple stab wounds in the chest and head of the young victim indicated that the killing was "the work of a frenzied sex maniac."

This theory was later discounted and an autopsy did not reveal that there had been any sexual assault.

But the prosecutor admitted there were no suspects. All they knew was some of the boys Streicher was sledding with said they saw the 7-year-old go off with a man in a black coat.

"We have absolutely nothing to go on," Rapp said a few days later.

Another clue was the boy's sled was at his house, though leaned against it in a way the boy didn't normally leave it.

"One of the mysteries that still haunts me is that they found the sled leaning against the house in the place he always put it, but it was the opposite of how he always placed it," Mann said. "The question becomes: who put it there. It was never answered."

From the get-go, a lack of clues had speculation running wild. Even officials disagreed about where the murder took place and why. While the prosecutor believed it was sexual in nature early on, the Ypsilanti Police Chief Ralph Southard wasn't quite buying it.

"I think there is a motive," he said. "I can't feel there is anything else than revenge. There was no evidence of sex mania. It might have been a maniac with a lust for blood."

Story of the day

With no suspects or leads, police began rounding up local "degenerates" and questioning them.

They went to the Oliver hotel, where the proprietor had seen a man "accused of taking indecent liberties with small boys several months ago, but was not prosecuted when the father of one of the boys refused to sign a complaint in order to spare his son the embarrassment of a trial."

They interviewed the man, but it didn't pan out. Police interviewed other men in town with criminal pasts, but still nothing panned out.

"Pretty much anybody who had the slightest connection with Richard Streicher was a suspect at some point or another," Mann said.

Meanwhile, the case continued to gain nationwide notoriety. It had only been a few years since the "Torch Murders," when in 1931 four teenagers were shot, beaten and the girls raped. Ypsilanti had become known for murder.

"It was the major story of the day," Mann said. "Everybody wanted to know about it. Everyone was scared for the safety on their children. They didn't know if there was a motive behind this particular murder or if there was someone preying on children."

The case prompted Gov. Frank Fitzgerald to put the Michigan State Police in charge of the investigation.

"The Ypsilanti police really weren't equipped for this sort of thing. This brought national attention," Mann said.

State police checked out tips in Illinois, where the boy's former uncle lived. He was a suspect possibly because he was estranged from the family after asking the boy's rich grandfather for money, but also possibly because he was Italian, something the papers pointed out at the time.

Investigators also went to Elkhart, Indiana, where the Streichers formerly lived, to talk to a former neighbor.

They interviewed an ex-con named "Bloody Mike" and a Depression-era hobo who lived in a boxcar at the Shanghai pit west of Ypsilanti.

But the investigation still went no where.

Cold case

The boy's parents were also questioned extensively. The flamboyant attorney Clinton I. LeForge, noted for his extensive collection of Native American artifacts, represented the couple.

He admitted to the press that he'd filed divorce papers on behalf of Mrs. Streicher -- who, as was the standard of the times, was never listed with her first name in the papers -- a few years earlier.

"He ended up taking truth serum to answer questions concerning the case," Mann said.

According to the newspapers of the time, the parents were never considered serious suspects.

Mann said long ago he'd heard that a former Ypsilanti Michigan State Police post commander had said police knew who did it, but just never had enough evidence to charge him.

Over the next few years, the investigation dried up. A judge eventually held a grand jury, which heard testimony from 39 people involved in the case.

Still nothing. The story faded from the headlines. People moved on.

Buck Holt, the teen who found the body, was arrested for stealing a car, sent to a "training school" in Washington D.C., where he escaped, according to a news report.

LeForge was later disbarred for embezzling money from an estate, according to Mann. He died in a "freak accident" operating a sawmill at his home, when a flying piece of wood crushed his chest, according to a newspaper report at the time.

The Streichers eventually moved to Grand Rapids.

Seven-year-old Richard Streicher is buried at Highland Cemetery in an unmarked grave, murdered without a trace.

Editor's note: This story has been edited to correct the circumstances of LeForge's death.

John Counts covers crime and breaking news for The Ann Arbor News. He can be reached at johncounts@mlive.com or you can follow him on Twitter. Find all Washtenaw County crime stories here.