05/14/2026
For National Police Week...
SHOTS FIRED ON READING ROAD
How Two Cincinnati Detectives Reopened a 44-Year-Old Cop Killing—and Finally Uncovered the Truth
By Jeff Schare
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At 3:00 in the morning on March 11, 1961, Cincinnati Patrolman Donald Martin stepped out of his cruiser onto a dark parking lot near Reading Road.
Within minutes, he was dead.
Witnesses later described a horrifying scene: a police officer running for his life while a gunman chased him through the darkness, firing repeatedly. One witness recalled seeing Martin raise his hands as if surrendering before collapsing face-first onto the pavement. The killer walked up and fired one final shot into the back of the officer’s head.
Then he vanished.
For more than four decades, Martin’s murder remained one of Cincinnati’s most haunting unsolved crimes—a cold case buried inside dusty evidence boxes and fading memories.
Then, in 2005, two homicide detectives reopened the file.
What followed was a remarkable investigation involving long-buried confessions, violent family secrets, forgotten witnesses, and a trail of hidden knowledge passed quietly through generations of one dangerous family.
The investigation would eventually convince detectives they had finally identified Patrolman Martin’s killer.
But by then, nearly everyone involved was already dead.
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A Murder That Never Left the Cincinnati Police Department
Donald Martin was not walking into a gunfight that night.
According to investigators, the 28-year-old officer had simply stopped to look at cars.
Martin and his wife Gayle were preparing to adopt a baby and had been discussing buying a larger vehicle. During his overnight shift, Martin reportedly told his sergeant that if things stayed quiet, he might stop by a dealership and look around.
Sometime around 3:00 a.m., Martin arrived near Downtown Lincoln Mercury at 721 Reading Road.
Detectives now believe he interrupted suspects attempting to steal a battery from a vehicle on the lot.
A violent struggle followed.
Martin’s uniform was later discovered to be ripped and torn, evidence of a fierce fight. At some point during the confrontation, the suspect gained control of Martin’s .38 caliber service revolver.
Martin was shot in the chest.
Mortally wounded, he tried to flee.
Four young men returning from a night of gambling in Newport, Kentucky witnessed what happened next.
They later told police they saw a white male chasing the officer while firing repeatedly at his back. Martin ran up a ramp near the Nabisco lot before collapsing onto the pavement.
The gunman approached and fired a final execution-style shot into the back of the officer’s head.
The killer disappeared into the darkness before responding officers arrived.
Despite one of the largest manhunts in the city’s history, nobody was ever charged.
The case slowly faded into legend inside the Cincinnati Police Department.
But not into oblivion.
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Forty-Four Years Later
In February 2005, Cincinnati homicide detectives Jeff Schare and Kurt Ballman interviewed a woman named Jewel Masterson regarding an unrelated confession made years earlier by her ex-husband.
Masterson claimed her former husband once drunkenly admitted to shooting a police officer during a break-in near railroad tracks.
The story did not match the Martin homicide exactly. Different setting. Different details.
Most investigators would have moved on.
Schare and Ballman did not.
Instead, they pulled the original Martin homicide files from storage.
Five boxes.
Inside was a maze of aging reports, misplaced evidence, handwritten notes, witness statements, and forgotten investigative leads stretching back to 1961.
The detectives quickly discovered something strange.
One name kept surfacing beneath the surface of the case.
Walter Baker Walls.
Yet despite apparently being a major suspect during the original investigation, Walls was barely documented in the surviving records.
That raised immediate questions.
Had evidence been lost?
Misfiled?
Forgotten?
To answer those questions, Schare began contacting retired officers who might still remember the case.
One of them did.
Retired Detective Jerry Schimpf.
And Schimpf remembered everything.
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The Original Suspect
According to Schimpf, Walter Walls became a prime suspect only months after Martin’s murder.
Detectives at the time reportedly developed information linking Walls to the homicide and focused heavily on him during the original investigation.
Schimpf recalled traveling to the Ohio Penitentiary with another detective to interview Walls and lock him into an alibi.
According to Schimpf, the alibi began falling apart.
Witnesses were even brought to the prison to observe Walls in an attempt to identify him.
Schimpf later remembered witnesses saying Walls “looked like the shooter,” though none could make a definitive identification.
Detectives also reportedly recovered a plaid shirt and jacket believed to have been discarded near Martin’s service revolver after the murder. Schimpf recalled those items fitting Walls physically.
Still, there was never enough direct evidence to charge him.
The investigation stalled.
Years passed.
Then decades.
And Walter Walls walked free.
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“Is This About My Dad Killing a Cop?”
The case changed forever on March 8, 2005.
That was the day Detectives Schare and Ballman interviewed Walter Walls’ daughter, Anna Dove.
The detectives arrived simply hoping to gather background information.
Instead, they received something explosive.
After learning the detectives wanted to discuss her father, Dove immediately asked:
“Is this about my dad killing a cop?”
For investigators, the statement was stunning.
According to Dove, Walter Walls had privately admitted responsibility years earlier while threatening her over another murder case involving her mother’s death.
Dove described her father as violent and terrifying. She recounted how he allegedly dragged her into an alley, pointed a gun at her head, and warned:
“I’ll fu***ng kill you just like I killed that cop.”
The confession was not isolated.
Soon afterward, Dove’s sister Sheila Lewis independently referenced the same murder before detectives even mentioned it.
That pattern would continue throughout the investigation.
Again and again, members of the Walls family reacted not with confusion—but recognition.
As if the story had circulated quietly for years behind closed doors.
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The Family Secrets Begin to Surface
As detectives interviewed more relatives, the evidence grew increasingly compelling.
Sheila Lewis recalled Walter’s brother William Walls drunkenly bragging that he and Walter had “killed a cop by a warehouse and gotten away with it.”
When detectives later arrived at William Walls’ residence, his own sons reacted nervously before detectives fully explained why they were there.
“Is this about Uncle Walter and Da… I mean, Uncle Earl killing a cop?”
It was a revealing slip.
Then came the most important development of all.
William Walls himself began providing details investigators believed had never been publicly released.
He described:
• the chase route,
• the officer being shot behind the ear,
• the discarded plaid shirt,
• and even a loud muffler heard fleeing the scene.
That last detail particularly caught investigators’ attention.
No witness statements in the surviving files mentioned a loud muffler publicly. Yet William Walls described it specifically.
For experienced homicide detectives, this is known as “guilty knowledge”—details only someone connected to the crime would likely know.
The evidence was no longer just rumor.
It was corroboration.
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The Witness Who Never Forgot
By mid-2005, investigators tracked down Harold Stiver, one of the original eyewitnesses from 1961.
More than forty years after the murder, Stiver still vividly remembered the horror.
He recalled hearing gunshots while riding with friends along Reading Road.
He remembered seeing a police officer running.
He remembered the shooter firing repeatedly into the officer’s back.
And he remembered the final shot.
Years earlier, Stiver had participated in a prison identification procedure involving Walter Walls.
Even decades later, he maintained that the man he saw in the prison hallway looked like the killer.
Not certainty.
But belief.
And when combined with the mounting family admissions, the old witness testimony suddenly carried renewed significance.
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The Mystery of “Cadillac Charlie”
Throughout the investigation, family members repeatedly mentioned another figure connected to the murder.
“Cadillac Charlie.”
Detectives eventually identified him as Charles Herbert Jillson.
According to multiple witnesses and relatives, Jillson drove the getaway vehicle the night Patrolman Martin was killed.
Then, years later, Jillson disappeared.
Several family members claimed Walter Walls later bragged about murdering Cadillac Charlie because he was a witness to the police officer’s murder.
One former girlfriend of Walter Walls told detectives he frequently pointed out a location along River Road and claimed that was where he killed Jillson.
No body was ever conclusively identified.
No prosecution followed.
But investigators believed Jillson may have become another victim tied to the Martin homicide.
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A Case Solved Too Late
By the end of the investigation, Detectives Schare and Ballman believed they had solved Cincinnati’s oldest unsolved police homicide.
Their conclusion was direct:
Walter Baker Walls killed Patrolman Donald Martin on March 11, 1961.
Detectives further concluded that members of the Walls family likely assisted either before or after the shooting, though uncertainty remained regarding exactly which brother was present.
But there would be no arrests.
Walter Walls was already dead.
So were several others connected to the case.
There would be no trial.
No conviction.
No courtroom reckoning.
Only a reconstructed truth assembled from decades of silence.
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Why Cold Cases Matter
To outsiders, cold case investigations can seem futile.
Witnesses die.
Evidence disappears.
Memories fade.
But homicide detectives understand something the public often forgets:
Families never stop waiting for answers.
Neither do police departments.
The murder of a police officer leaves a scar that lasts generations.
For Cincinnati detectives, solving Martin’s murder was not only about prosecution.
It was about history.
Accountability.
And refusing to let a murdered officer vanish into forgotten paperwork.
By reopening five dusty evidence boxes in 2005, Detectives Jeff Schare and Kurt Ballman accomplished something rare in cold case work.
They brought clarity to a mystery that had haunted the city for nearly half a century.
And in doing so, they restored Patrolman Donald Martin’s story to the place it belonged:
Not buried in archives.
But remembered.
