Shots Fired on Reading Road: A Murdered Cincinnati Policeman and the 44-Year Search for His Killer

Shots Fired on Reading Road tells the true story of the 1961 murder of Cincinnati Patrolman Donald Martin and the forty-four-year search for the man who killed him.Martin was working the overnight shift when he stopped near a car dealership on Reading Road. Within minutes, he had been shot multiple times with his own service revolver. Witnesses saw the gunman. Police recovered the weapon, clothing believed to have been discarded by the killer, and other evidence. Hundreds of suspects were investigated and thousands of people were questioned. Detectives even developed a promising suspect-Walter Baker Walls-but the evidence never became strong enough to support a prosecution. As the years passed, the case grew cold.In 2005, Cincinnati Homicide Detectives Jeff Schare and Kurt Ballman reopened the investigation after an unrelated lead brought Martin's forgotten case back to their attention. What began with old reports and boxes of evidence led them to retired detectives, surviving eyewitnesses, prison recollections, long-held family secrets, and statements that had remained buried for decades. Piece by piece, the investigation returned to the same man the original detectives had suspected years earlier.Drawing on police records, contemporary reporting, original interview recordings, photographs, and Schare's firsthand account of the reinvestigation, Shots Fired on Reading Road reconstructs both the murder and the extraordinary effort to finally answer the question that had followed Patrolman Donald Martin for more than four decades.Walter Baker Walls never stood trial for Martin's murder. He had died before the case was reopened. But after forty-four years, Schare and Ballman reached an investigative conclusion that finally gave the case an answer.This is not simply the story of a cold case. It is the story of two generations of detectives, the limits of evidence and memory, and the determination to ensure that a murdered police officer was never forgotten.Some cases end with a conviction. Others end with the truth.