Norwich ― A 6-inch-thick Norwich Police Department binder contains seven years of investigative work into the mysterious deaths of posthumously famous African American folk artist Ellis Ruley and his son-in-law, Douglas Harris more than a half century ago.

The contents show a lack of an initial investigation into Harris’ death in 1948 and Ruley’s in 1959. Renewed interest and a rigorous police investigation ensued decades later but left the cases still unresolved.

While the file contains many public documents ― newspaper stories and excerpts from published books ― the entire file became public for the first time after the state Supreme Court redefined what police can conceal in cold cases.

In a unanimous ruling in February pertaining to a 2010 Madison cold case murder, the court said the Freedom of Information Act exemption that allows police to conceal investigations does not apply to cases with no reasonable likelihood of an arrest.

Justice Raheem Mullins wrote that, to keep cases sealed, law enforcement agencies must show that an arrest or probable cause for prosecution “is at least reasonable, not a mere theoretical possibility.”

In 2012, Norwich attorney Samuel Browning heard the repeated pleas of Harry Ruley Jr., nephew of the artist, that the city conduct a proper investigation and bring justice to the family. Browning, who has experience in police investigations, volunteered to work with then-Detective Corey Poore, now deputy chief, to open a cold case investigation.

The two tracked down and interviewed potential witnesses and former neighbors of the rustic and wooded property at 20 Hammond Ave. They read published accounts by family members and documentarian and Ruley art enthusiast Glenn R. Smith. Smith’s 1993 book, “Discovering Ellis Ruley,” put a national spotlight on Ruley’s art and the family mysteries. A report by a private investigator, hired by Smith and the family, is in the file.

Browning obtained weather data from the dates of the incidents, scoured hand-scrawled police arrest logs from the months prior to and after their deaths, read newspaper articles and researched racial tensions in the region. Ruley family members have described hateful vitriol aimed at Ruley and his wife, Wilhimina, a white woman, and family members.

In 2014, author Smith and the Ruley family enlisted former New York City Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Michael Baden to exhume the skeletal remains of both Ruley and Harris. The exhumation and Baden’s findings, widely covered by media, are in the file.

The investigators’ conclusion: dead ends, speculation, no probable cause to point fingers at anyone. The final tab in the binder is a collection of newspaper clippings celebrating Ruley’s artwork and tributes paid to Ruley by fellow artists and the city.

“You just want to take all the evidence and lay it all out and you want it to point in the direction of a crime and/or the person that committed the crime,” Poore said last week. “And that didn’t happen.”

Browning concurred. He said he spent seven years on the case and spent about $8,000 out of pocket. But by the time he and Poore started, many potential witnesses or suspects had died.

“It was impossible to put it back together again,” Browning said, “especially if you don’t have scientific evidence. This is not blaming the current police department. I wish they had done a better job back then. At the time Douglas Harris died, the police department did not have any detectives on staff. The officer called to the case investigated it.”

Original documents sparse

On Nov. 19, 1948, Harris, 38, had an argument with his wife, Marion Harris, Ruley’s daughter, at their Hammond Avenue home, the brief local medical examiner’s report stated. At about 8:30 p.m., she asked him to fetch water from the rudimentary stone-lined open well some 100 feet from the house.

He said he was going downtown instead and never returned, not uncommon for the heavy drinker, his wife told the medical examiner. At 4:30 the following evening, she went to the well herself and saw his feet protruding from the water.

Without an autopsy in the days before the state had a centralized medical examiner’s office, local Assistant Medical Examiner Dr. Henry Archambault wrote that Harris’ lungs were full of water, and he had two depressions on his head.

“Drowning,” Archambault wrote. “Fell into well head first.”

Both The Day and the Norwich Bulletin ran brief stories on the drowning, attributing information to the medical examiner and firefighters, who lassoed Harris’ feet and pulled him out. No police records are in the file.

Browning said he suspected Harris was murdered based on the circumstances ― unlikely that a grown man could fall head-first down a narrow well hole ― even before Dr. Baden’s 2014 autopsy. During a packed-house news conference, Baden announced he discovered Harris’ hyoid bone in his neck was fractured.

Baden wrote in his opinion that Harris likely struggled, was strangled and was unconscious but still alive when he “went into” the well, thus his lungs were full of water.

Browning and Poore said there was no way of connecting anyone with Harris’ death. Browning said, however, that it was unlikely that a random stranger unfamiliar with the dark, steep, foreboding property and remote location of the unmarked well far from the house could have managed it.

Eleven years later, on the evening of Jan. 16, 1959, Ellis Ruley, 76, a self-taught folk artist who had sold his paintings at local art shows, had gone to a Norwich tavern. He took a taxi home. His body, wet clothes frozen, was found the next morning by a neighbor. He was face down on the road at the base of the winding, steep path up to his house. Blood was splattered on stones along the path.

This time, an autopsy was conducted. “Acute cardiac dilation. Exposure to cold,” local Medical Examiner Dr. George H. Gildersleeve wrote. Ruley’s laceration on his forehead “apparently resulted from a fall and produced the blood, which was seen along the sides of the pathway.” Ruley’s blood-alcohol level was 0.14, nearly twice the modern 0.08 level for drunken driving. No police reports are in the file.

In 2014, Baden agreed that Ruley likely died of exposure. But he said it was inconclusive as to whether Ruley was assaulted and knocked to the ground or fell on his own.

“However, 0.14% alcohol would not be sufficient to have caused Mr. Ruley, an experienced drinker, to lose consciousness or be too confused to reach his house,” Baden wrote.

The mysteries did not end with Harris’ and Ruley’s deaths. Shortly after midnight on Aug. 12, 1961, the now-vacant Ruley homestead burned to the ground in an arson fire. No arrests were made. Dozens of Ruley’s paintings stored in the house presumably were lost in the blaze.

Decades later, author Smith became enchanted by a painting of Adam and Eve at the popular Brimfield, Mass., flea market in about 1990. Smith purchased it for $3,500.

The discovery set him on a path to learn about Ruley, his life and his art. By then, dealers and collectors were enamored by Ruley’s work. Smith tracked down 62 Ruley paintings featured in his book, “Discovering Ellis Ruley,” which also delved into the suspicious deaths of Ruley and Harris.

Smith worked with family members and helped launch the 2014 exhumation and reexaminations of Harris’ and Ruley’s bodies.

Relevant sections of Smith’s book are in the police file, along with a written transcript of a recorded interview Smith conducted with the son of Hammond Avenue neighbor Paul Schlough. The Schlough family had a complex relationship with the Ruleys, including border disputes.

According to the transcript, Paul Schlough Jr. told the author the police had found Ruley’s wallet some 15 feet from his body, empty of cash. Browning said no other records mention the wallet.

Asked by Smith about potential racial motivation for Ruley’s death, Schlough Jr. responded: “I never heard nothing about KKK’s until way after this happened.” The file contains news articles on Ku Klux Klan activity in eastern Connecticut in the early 1980s, and about a 1968 violent raid on a Voluntown pacifist compound by a right-wing radical group, The Minutemen.

Family members over the years had relayed stories of racial intimidation from neighbors and strangers. Cars full of strangers would drive by the property, shouting racial insults toward the family, Ellis Ruley’s nephew, Harry Ruley, wrote in a letter included in the cold case file.

A private investigator interviewed longtime residents of Norwich’s East Side neighborhood in the early 1990s. Some relayed colorful stories about the Ruleys. Ellis had purchased a large 1931 green roadster, and his wife, Wilhimina, would stop traffic on East Main Street to allow Ellis to pull out of Hammond Avenue safely onto East Main.

Those interviewed said there was no KKK activity on Hinckley Hill, where Hammond Avenue is located. One said Wilhimina was “shunned more than taunted” for her marriage to a Black man.

Browning researched records of several individuals connected with the KKK and Minutemen. He said it would be far-fetched to try to connect them to the suspicious deaths or the house fire.

Browning also researched arson fires in Norwich in the years prior to and after the 1961 Ruley house fire. The cold case file has records of several arson and assault charges in 1968. He could make no credible connections to the Ruley house fire.

“Sam did an amazing job of just raking information from everywhere,” Poore said, “from archives, police reports, from everywhere. He was the one to gather a lot of information. We would meet on a regular basis and gather the information and discuss it.”

The file also contains a 1996 story in The Day reporting that the FBI had become interested in how dozens of Ruley’s paintings were being sold or marketed by dealers, when so many paintings were lost in the fire. Family members have complained over the years that the family owns none of Ruley’s paintings, now coveted by museums.

In his book, Smith wrote that he learned a Philadelphia art gallery director in 1981 had purchased from a Rhode Island dealer a cardboard box stuffed full of about 40 Ruley paintings, some stuck together, “all dirty, damp and moldy,” Smith wrote. The dealer cleaned and salvaged as many as he could.

Slater Museum now has a permanent exhibition featuring six Ruley paintings, tributes to him, information about his mysterious death and the 2014 exhumation and reburial. Smith donated a bronze bust of Ruley he crafted to the city. It is on display at City Hall. Quilters made a quilt with squares featuring some of his paintings.

The Ruley family also lost the Hammond Avenue homestead, one key strip in a court border dispute ruling and then the rest to the city in a tax foreclosure. Now relisted as 28 Hammond Ave., the property was dedicated by the city as the Ellis Walter Ruley Memorial Park in July 2018.

In 2020, the park was added to the Connecticut Freedom Trail to honor the artist and his father, Joshua Ruley, who had escaped slavery and settled in Norwich, where Ellis was born in 1882.

“I appreciate the Ruley family bringing this back to the forefront,” Poore said of the ongoing mystery surrounding the two deaths. “And I wish we could have had a better outcome, but it’s not for lack of trying.”

c.bessette@theday.com