The Duckworth File: A lead amid faded hope
The Virginian-Pilot
August 26, 2007
Last updated: 11:36 PM

Thirty-two years after Fred Duckworth's body was found sprawled beside a quiet Norfolk street, the manila folder in which detectives filed their notes on the case was 7 inches thick. Members of the department had spent collective years looking into the shooting. They had developed theories about motive. Had identified people with solid reason to wish the victim harm. Had the names of others who'd been passed along by informants.

But theories were one thing; real leads were another. Legally speaking, the folder was stuffed with dead ends. Detectives new to the homicide squad would be handed the file to search for overlooked clues. They found none.

Until Willie E. Creedle entered the picture.

In 2004, Creedle told detectives visiting him in federal prison that an old friend of his, John S. Ozlin of South Hill, had talked of killing Duckworth a few years after the fact.

The stories had unfurled, Creedle said, at a cabin that Ozlin's father kept in Palmer Springs, a settlement on the North Carolina line southwest of South Hill. The two met there to drink on numerous occasions.

They'd known each other for years, though not well - Ozlin was just a year older but had graduated from high school four years before Creedle, in 1958. Youngest graduate, it was said, of any student in Park View High's history, at least until then.

Their military backgrounds brought them together. Ozlin had been a Marine. Creedle had been in the Army. One night they were drinking in the cabin, and Ozlin started talking about this mayor he'd killed. Said he had been paid to do it. Said he shot the man after watching him make a phone call. Said he had to shoot more than once. Did it with a .22-caliber Ruger semiautomatic.

Creedle said that Ozlin, who stood 6-foot-2, told him he'd pulled his jacket's hood up, and slipped a roll of toilet paper onto his head and under the hood to make himself appear taller. After the shooting, he'd tossed the gun off of a small bridge into a body of water.

Ozlin was boasting about it, Creedle said. He brought it up on subsequent nights of drinking, as well. Always, the two were alone. Always, Ozlin raised the subject. When Creedle tried to bring it up, he said, Ozlin would turn silent and dark.

One more thing: When Ozlin came back to South Hill from Hampton Roads, he was driving a new Porsche 911.

Veteran investigators Glen Ford and Scott Mayer left Butner, N.C., mulling the story. It posed problems.

One: The details of the crime were no secret. They'd been spelled out in newspaper articles many times. Number of shots, location of wounds, Duckworth's movements - it was all part of the public record. Some reports had included maps depicting two small bridges over fingers of the Lafayette River a few blocks from the scene.

Creedle could be making the whole thing up. Or not: Ozlin could have been telling tall tales.


That raised a second, bigger problem: Johnnie Ozlin was dead. He'd died in Richmond's MCV Hospitals in February 1991. He wasn't around to defend himself. Could neither confirm nor deny Creedle's account of his confession.

Which brought up another worry - Creedle himself. For most of his life he'd been "quite a wild buck," as a cousin of his put it. Had a respectable start: son to a well-regarded farmer and his schoolteacher wife in Union Level, west of South Hill; active in student government in high school, Future Farmers, 4-H; defensive lineman on the football team. Went to business college. Joined the Army in 1965. Married. Had two children.

In 1971, Creedle left active duty and opened a business selling mobile homes in South Hill. As he told it, he was doing that when Duckworth was killed. Did it until 1974, when rising interest rates put him under. Re-entered the Army as a reservist in 1975. Went to jump school. Served as an interrogator. Got out for good in 1980. Afterward, would say little of his time in uniform. Concluded mention of it, years later, with: "That's all I'm going to say. I'm serious as death."

Maybe the service turned him rowdy. Whatever the case, in February 1981, he was indicted for discharging a firearm into an occupied vehicle. He was convicted. While he awaited sentencing in October 1982, he was arrested for killing a longtime acquaintance, one Franklin Delano "Dilly" Johnson.

Witnesses testified that while drinking beer with several friends, Johnson had pulled a paper bag onto his head, like a hat, and dared Creedle to shoot it off. Creedle had done so with a .38-caliber Charter Arms revolver. Johnson had dared him to do it again. This time he pulled the bag down until its bottom rested on top of his skull. Creedle took up the dare. Johnson wound up with a hole beside his nose.

A jury found Creedle guilty of manslaughter and sent him away for more than three years. On his release, he sold cars in Richmond. Then, in the early spring of 1990, he and his son, Garland Scott Creedle, sold a fully automatic Cobray M-10 pistol and silencer to a confidential informant of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. When the feds came to arrest the pair more than two years later, the Creedles fled to Honduras.

Garland grew homesick, and he returned to Virginia and a prison term. His father bounced around Honduras, Guatemala and Belize. Opened a wholesale seafood business. Fathered four children by two women. Served as bodyguard to the rich. Became an honorary colonel in a local militia. Lived large.

Twelve years passed before the authorities swooped in.


Despite his past, detectives were not inclined to wave off Creedle. For one thing, Ozlin's name was not new to them. It was included on a list of "persons of interest" that had been put in the case file years before.

The roster, evidently an attempt to index everyone who might have played a role in the killing, contained little beyond names. Most were well-known to anyone familiar with the case. Ozlin's was an exception.

They had another reason to pay attention. Creedle had surprised them by announcing that he'd already provided his story to law enforcement. He'd given a statement to the Virginia State Police back in 1982 or 1983, while he was doing time for Dilly Johnson's death.

Ford and Mayer checked out his story. The state troopers backed it up. Creedle had spoken with State Police Trooper Fred Clark while incarcerated. Clark had doubts about the tip - he noted that the prisoner had given him a journal in which he'd supposedly recorded Ozlin's remarks shortly after he made them; lab analysis had shown that the ink in said journal was just days old.

Still, the trooper filed a report on the interview. Reading it, the Norfolk detectives understood that Creedle's story hadn't changed. What's more, they saw that the report had been forwarded to their own department.

No mention of the document appeared in the case file. Over the years, in one culling or another, it had evidently been discarded or misplaced. That raised a question: Had Ozlin's name taken its place on the list of possible suspects because Creedle named him years before, or had Creedle corroborated information that detectives already had?

Detective Ford sought out Ralph Mears, 16 years into the older man's retirement, only to find that the investigator once renowned for his photographic memory no longer had it. Mears couldn't recall much about Johnnie Ozlin. Mario Asaro wasn't much help, either.

The only thing left to do was to start fresh on figuring out who this Ozlin was.


What can be said for certain is this: John Ozlin's life began in Richmond in January 1942. He was the first of three children born to S.T. Ozlin Jr., a tire dealer and scion of a family prominent in Southside Virginia. One of S.T.'s uncles, Thomas W. Ozlin, was Virginia's speaker of the House. Another was a prominent lawyer and mayor of Chase City, one of Mecklenburg County's principal towns. A third spent more than 35 years as the agricultural agent in old Princess Anne County, today's Virginia Beach.

Johnnie's family moved to South Hill, his father's home place, when he was 7. The Ozlins ran South Hill Tire and Recapping there, and within a couple of years moved into a big brick rancher just south of town. The furnishings were luxurious. Johnnie wanted for nothing. Some considered him spoiled.

After high school, he worked for his father at the tire store. Joined the Marines Reserve in 1962. Sold liquor at an ABC store for a while. Lived in Richmond in 1964 and 1965, working for a tire outfit and living with several guys from South Hill.

One facet of his personality became plain: He was wild and reckless when drunk. One longtime friend, C.H. "Penny" Bracey, would later describe him as a "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," somebody who "could run for governor and win" when sober, but who turned mean with drink.

"He was a hell-raiser to start with - no ifs, ands or buts," Bracey recalled. "He enjoyed fighting."

Ozlin joined the Marines in 1965. Was stationed on Okinawa. By his telling, went to Vietnam on at least two occasions. Honorably discharged in 1967, he returned to South Hill before moving again, to Virginia Beach.


Ample evidence exists that Ozlin was present in the area when Duckworth was killed. The Virginia Beach city directories for 1971 and 1972 list him as manager of a Super Tire Stores outlet at 1948 Diamond Springs Road. Old friends describe his renting a place just off Shore Drive with another South Hill man, now dead.

Ozlin is said to have packed a gun at all times. To have used it once after a drunken argument with his roommate: While the other man was upstairs in the shower, Ozlin reportedly fired a round from the room below. He only just missed. He terrified some of his co-workers at the tire place. At least one took to carrying a gun himself.

Ozlin reportedly cultivated some very unsavory friends in Hampton Roads. Mobsters, his acquaintances called them. Mafia, is how Creedle put it.

The detectives found documentation that Ozlin bounced between Hampton Roads and Mecklenburg County through much of 1973: A ticket for defective equipment in South Hill on Jan. 19. A reckless driving charge in the 1300 block of Military Highway on March 31. A court appearance and conviction on that charge in late May. An incident where no charges were filed, in which he shot a friend in the stomach in South Hill.

Most memorably, the detectives found that Ozlin had burned down the unoccupied Truckers Rest and Relaxation Massage Parlor, located alongside I-85 in Bracey, Va., in the early morning hours of Aug. 15, 1973. The crime followed a melee at the massage parlor the previous night, and another disturbance the night before that; Ozlin was central to both.

He served 90 days before his "perfect prison record" earned him parole, in June 1974. Back in South Hill, he helped manage his father's tire store. Attracted notice driving around town in his 1973 Porsche - detectives were able to confirm that detail, too.

Ozlin destroyed the car and was badly injured in a accident just outside South Hill. Wound up in the hospital. Drank in earnest. He ran into more trouble >in July 1977, when he was named in a two-count federal indictment for receiving and possessing a rifle and pistol, a criminal act for a felon. Served just under six months of a two-year sentence.

The rest of the trail revealed a steady, sad decline. Two DUIs within days of each other in 1988. Jail on one of the charges. Liver trouble. By the time he died, he had swelled up to twice his normal size. Lifelong friends could barely recognize him.


Did Johnnie Ozlin pull the trigger? Detectives can't say. Some of the people they interviewed in South Hill, people who knew Ozlin all his life, said flat-out that they didn't believe it.

Indeed, any evidence suggesting his involvement is second-hand or circumstantial. Enough to start an inquiry, perhaps. Not enough to wrap one up.

Police have not established a definite link between Ozlin and anyone identified as having a motive to kill Duckworth. Mears and Asaro never linked those with a motive to the commission of the crime.

Thirty-five years after the fact, the case is at an impasse. About the only hope for cracking it lies in someone stepping forward with new information. New evidence. A small, seemingly insignificant detail that ties everything together.

It could happen. Ralph Mears has seen it, himself. He worked the case of a woman whose body was found half-buried off Northampton Boulevard in August 1984. She'd been married to a big Army sergeant. Mears was certain he'd killed her.

Nearly 18 months later, an ex-sailor living in Massachusetts drove to Norfolk, walked into police headquarters and confessed. He'd been stationed here in 1984. Said he forced the woman into his car, raped her and killed her. Also confessed to raping and killing a Norfolk middle-schooler, and raping a third woman, and beating a sleeping man with a hammer.

So you never know. Maybe one of these days, someone who's nearing the end will want to unburden his or her conscience.

The police have their evidence ready, should that day come. They kept the clothes Duckworth wore. The seven shell casings found on Major Avenue. The bullets extracted from his body.

Another trinket of Fred Duckworth's last night can still be found across town.

When his widow, Gertrude, died, the family donated the mayor's papers and mementos to Old Dominion University. Scrapbooks detailing his career at Ford and City Hall. Clippings about his death. His gavel. His Shriner fez.

They're all stored in the school's library. And, in one box, alongside his pocket knife and tie tacks, is his stainless steel pedometer.

Presumably, the one he was wearing when he died.

Its hand remains stopped just shy of five miles.

Earl Swift, (757) 446-2352, earl.swift@pilotonline.com

Ellie