The Murder of Natalie Scheublin (Massachusetts)

Investigators who first worked the 1971 homicide case of Natalie Scheublin in Bedford, Massachusetts considered every possible theory for her death – kidnapping for ransom, burglary gone wrong, a random attack in an otherwise quiet community – and yet nothing led police to the truth. For years, Natalie’s family waited for answers until decades later, forensic technology finally identified a suspect.

June 10, 1971

It was just after 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 10, 1971 when Raymond Scheublin turned into the driveway of his home at 75 Pine Hill Road in Bedford, Massachusetts. He was the president of Lexington Trust Bank at the time and had just finished up a day at the office complete with a board meeting and was finally home to have dinner with his wife, 54-year old Natalie Scheublin.

The Scheublin home was a classic Cape Cod style house set back on a large wooded lot with a swimming pool out back. The house itself was perched on a hill, but the attached garage sat lower on that hill, almost below the house itself adjacent to the basement. So Raymond pulled his car into the garage and made his way inside through the cellar door entrance, as usual.

He hadn’t been inside for more than a few seconds when he encountered a terrible scene. There on the cellar floor, Raymond found his wife laying at the bottom of the basement stairs in a pool of blood. She’d been stabbed and beaten, and he could see that her legs were tied and a makeshift gag was fastened around her mouth and neck. Raymond went for the phone to call the police and soon Bedford Police arrived to the scene of what was immediately ruled a homicide.

Investigation

The medical examiner performed the autopsy and concluded that Natalie Scheublin died as the result of blunt wounds to the back of her head and stab wounds to her chest. He remarked that the wounds were indicative of overkill. There was no evidence of sexual assault.

Detectives from Bedford Police as well as a State Police Detective from the Middlesex County District Attorney’s office would ultimately handle the case, and the investigation into what happened inside the Scheublin home that day began swiftly. Investigators immediately noted that Natalie’s vehicle, a 1969 blue and white Chevrolet Impala, was missing from the driveway. Police began patrolling the neighborhood and canvassing the neighbor’s houses hoping to find anyone who saw the car leave that afternoon, and find out who was behind the wheel.

Meanwhile, back at the house, crime scene technicians were dusting for prints, collecting evidence, and looking for clues that could begin to piece the timeline of events together. Nick Caraganis of the Lowell Sun reports that the back door that was typically kept shut and locked was found open. There was no sign of forced entry so police theorized that whoever killed Natalie was possibly let in under some sort of ruse or that Natalie might have been going in and out of the house either to tend to the garden or clean the pool and the intruder managed to sneak in while the door was unlocked but while Natalie was out of sight.

In the upstairs bathroom, benzidine tests revealed blood on the sink and in Natalie and Raymond’s bedroom, two purses and a wallet had been emptied out and discarded on the floor, but the rest of the house didn’t appear to be rifled through or ransacked in any way. The valuable china and silver were untouched.

Investigators did not find a weapon anywhere in the house but believed that the killer or killers had beaten Natalie with a hammer-like or another blunt object, maybe a sledge hammer or pry bar. A 24-inch black pinch bar was reportedly missing from the house, along with a 5-inch unserrated paring knife, thought to be used to inflict the stab wounds on Natalie’s chest.

About four hours after Natalie’s body was discovered, police tracked down Natalie’s car in a parking lot at the nearby Bedford Veterans Administration Hospital. Officers staked out the car in case whoever killed Natalie and stole the car returned to the vehicle, but hours later there was no sign of a suspect, so they seized the car to process it for evidence. Interestingly, the car keys were missing.

Now, the VA hospital was about a mile drive from the Scheublin house on the main roads, but it was a much shorter walk through the woods – just about 500 meters. The fact that Natalie’s car was discovered abandoned in the hospital parking lot gave police one of the first leads in the case. Investigators spoke with hospital staff who disclosed that four patients were apparently missing from the hospital on the day of the murder. The director of the hospital reported to police that the patients, all men, had left sometime during the day for what was considered an unauthorized absence and they still hadn’t come back yet the following day, June 11. Police were extremely interested in speaking with the men regarding their whereabouts at the estimated time of the murder.

Although the VA hospital director and other staff were nothing but cooperative with the investigation, there was reason to believe that Natalie’s car being in the lot was a coincidence and not proof that a patient was somehow connected to the killing. The hospital director shared that it actually wasn’t unusual to find random vehicles in the hospital lot and said that stolen cars showed up there all the time. The campus was pretty large with nine buildings and multiple parking lots, so it was apparently easy for a car to remain somewhat anonymous once on the grounds.

By the evening of June 11, police had tracked down two of the four VA patients for questioning and after that, they didn’t have any reason to believe the patients were involved with what happened to Natalie. The search for the other two men continued as detectives followed up with neighbors in the area about what they saw and heard on the afternoon of the murder.

The houses along Pine Hill Road and the surrounding neighborhood, which was described as well-to-do, were fairly spread out and wooded areas tended to separate each lot. Neighbors didn’t report hearing anything alarming, however, a man who was biking down Spring Street around the estimated time of the murder said he saw two strange men walking away from the general area of the Scheublin house. Another witness reported that she had to slam on the brakes after an oncoming car nearly collided with her as she was driving home on Pine Hill Road the day of the murder. Unfortunately, the woman couldn’t remember what the driver looked like, nor could she give a description of the car.

Of course, investigators also interviewed Natalie’s husband Raymond. He told police that he last spoke to his wife on the phone around 12:45 or 1 p.m. that day. He then went into a board meeting at the bank, which gave him a rock solid alibi for the presumed time of the murder. He was cleared as a suspect in his wife’s killing early on.

Though there was little to go on in the first 48 hours of the investigation, police were developing a working theory based on the circumstances they were able to uncover. According to reporting by Ed Corsetti and Bill Duncliffe for the Boston Record American, investigators theorized that the intruder or intruders entered the Scheublin house through the rear door and the intent was to ransack the place, starting with the bedroom where her empty purses and wallet were found, but Natalie surprised them.

Police believed that Natalie then attempted to flee the house through the kitchen when she was struck in the back of the head with a blunt hammer-like object. She either fell or was carried to the basement where the intruder bound her legs and stabbed her.

Police further theorized that based on the blood found in the bathroom, the killer went back upstairs and attempted to wash his hands and then left in Natalie’s car that was parked in the driveway. This person then drove down Pine Hill Road, turned into the Bedford VA hospital campus, and dumped the car in Lot 5 and took the keys when they left. But who was responsible, and why they did it, were questions that still evaded the case.

Jack Gallant reports for the Boston Herald that by the time Natalie was laid to rest in Shawsheen Cemetery on June 12, investigators had ruled out all four of the VA hospital patients as potential suspects for her killing. However, they weren’t done with the hospital patient angle yet, and they asked workers in the hospital’s laundry room to keep an eye out for any items they found with blood on them. The laundry room staff reportedly turned over at least one article of clothing for testing.

Other pieces of the investigation were ongoing, with results of the fingerprinting and examinations of Natalie’s car still pending. In the meantime, the state detective working the case said they intended to check with all recently released individuals from the Billerica House of Correction with a record for daytime burglary to see if that turned into any solid theories. Until then, investigators continued to encourage the public to come forward if they’d seen Natalie’s blue and white sedan either on Pine Hill Road or Spring Street or parked in Lot number 5 at the VA hospital between 1 and 6 p.m. on the day of the murder, Thursday, June 10.

Natalie’s story continues on Dark Downeast. Press play to hear the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.