coloroized postcard of a sanitarium dining hall
The grand hall of the old Sanitarium is still used for special events today, though it has also served as dining hall, event hall, and/or common area over the years.

History Knox

This is Part I of the Romy Cotell Saga

MOUNT VERNON — The news came over the wire from the Ohio Penitentiary into the offices of the Mount Vernon Republican News.

The editor took one look at the bulletin and shouted into the newsroom for whichever reporter was available. This was breaking news.

With the bulletin in hand, the reporter raced out of the office and climbed into his car. He sped up the bricks of Gay Street, rolling through stop signs as he went.

He wanted to be the first newsman on the scene.

At the top of the hill, he turned right, passing Mound View Cemetery and rolled out of town and through Academia, past Hiawatha Park. He finally turned right on the dirt road headed out to the tuberculosis sanitarium.

Braking in a cloud of dust, the reporter jumped out of his car and rushed inside the main entrance of the administration wing. The receptionist looked up in surprise as he burst through the door.

TB Sanitarium Cottage: During his time at the tuberculosis sanitarium, Romy Cotell, like other patients, would have slept on the open-air porches, which helped the patients’ breathing.

“I’m with the News,” the reporter said. “I’m looking for Romy Cotell. Big news out of Columbus.”

An administrator was fetched, and after a couple of phone calls, it was determined the sanitarium inmate — an actual prison inmate transferred to Mount Vernon from the Ohio Penitentiary — was working in the kitchen.

The reporter was escorted to the facility’s large kitchen.

As the entered into the kitchen, patients and trustees were cleaning up after breakfast and beginning to prepare for lunch.

One worker had paused in his activity to wind and polish his pocket watch. The administrator pointed at him. The reporter stepped forward.

“Romy Cotell, how does it feel to be paroled?” the reporter asked.

Romy looked up, his eyes wide with shock, and dropped his watch, which shattered on the kitchen’s stone floor. It was news to him.

The reporter had actually beaten the message from the Penitentiary to the Mount Vernon Tuberculosis Sanitarium.

They had yet to be instructed to notify Cotell that after considerable discussion, the state parole board had decided the prisoner should be released.

Romy Cotell had been imprisoned for triple murder.

It was a crime he almost certainly did not commit. But it’s equally likely that the prison sentence saved Cotell’s life.

It was just one of many strange chapters in the life of Romulus Cotell.

He was a runaway from upstate New York whose life intersected with a horrific crime in the village of Tallmadge, Ohio, in 1896. He was rerouted through the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus, the TB sanitarium in Mount Vernon, back to upstate New York, then on to Chicago, and finally ending in California many years later.

For this year’s spooky October series, we’ll be examining Romy’s story, one which I first came across when investigating the crimes of Ceely Rose, which also took place in 1896.

In fact, the way I came across this story was in reading newspaper coverage of Ceely’s trial, as detailed in my book, The Ceely Rose Murders at Malabar Farm (The History Press, 2021).

At one point during her murder trial, Ceely said that she got the idea of killing her parents after hearing her folks discussing newspaper coverage of Romy Cotell’s case.

TB Sanitarium Admin Wing: The reporter who broke the news about Romy Cotell’s parole likely entered the Ohio State Sanitarium (still visible today as the Mount Vernon Developmental Center on Vernonview Drive) through the front administrative wing. He was then directed back to the kitchen, located near the dining room/assembly hall of the building, seen jutting out on the right.

The idea of removing family obstacles to reach the love of one’s life appealed greatly to Ceely, though my subsequent research revealed that she very much had the wrong idea about what was going on in Romy’s case.

Unfortunately for Romy, another person who got the wrong idea about the peculiar young man was the county prosecutor pursuing the case with a personal ax to grind.

I debated for a long time whether or not to write about Romy Cotell for History Knox, as much of the story takes place outside the area.

But the case’s connection to Mount Vernon through the tuberculosis sanitarium, and to Ceely Rose and the Malabar Farm area made me decide to debut this case here, one that I plan to do as a future book.

For those who haven’t yet seen it, my new book from The History Press is The Witch of Mansfield: The Tetched Life of Phebe Wise, a story with direct connections to Louis Bromfield, the founder of Malabar Farm.

I started my 2023 World Tour of Central Ohio by telling the tragic story of murderer Billy Bergin at the Mound View Cemetery Walking tour.

I sold copies of both my books at Malabar Farm’s Heritage Days last weekend, and I’ll continue the tour on Wednesday, Oct. 11, with a talk about Phebe Wise (with books for sale) at the Riedl Performance Hall at the Ohio State University Mansfield, at 6:30 p.m.

I’ll follow that with an appearance at the Cleo Redd Fisher Museum in Loudonville on Monday, Oct. 16, at 7 p.m., to again speak on Phebe and sell books.

The following week (still with books in tow), I’ll be speaking at the library in Coshocton to reprise my talk about Cletus Reese.

Return the next few weeks for the fascinating story of Romy Cotell, a story so rare that the library in Akron thanked me for finding it, because they’d never even heard of it!

More than one person has said that these sorts of stories have a way of finding me, and I think they’re right.