The Murder of John Shakespeare: A Centralia Cold Case

Authors Cary O’Dell and Richard L. Sprehe lead a literary investigation of a brutal cold-case murder.

In May 1975, in the small Southern Illinois town of Centralia, the body of one of its best-known residents, John Shakespeare, was found nearly nude, bound, and shot, execution-style, in the basement of his home. Shakespeare, sixty-nine, was a wealthy bachelor, an eccentric, an heir to the Shakespeare fishing fortune, a world-renowned collector of vintage cars, and, maybe, a possessor of a few secrets.

Despite the victim being well liked in the community, state and local police, and eventually even the FBI and Interpol, found a plethora of suspects while investigating the crime. Could it have been his longtime business associate? Or the mysterious hitchhiker seen in town just days before his body was found? Or a long-ago name from his past?

Cary O’Dell is a native of Southern Illinois and is the authors of the book ＂Bucky’s Dome＂ and ＂Johnny Bob: The Life and Times of Johnny Bob Harrell of Louisville, IL＂ as well as five other books. A graduate of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, he works for the Library of Congress in Washington, DC and lives in Culpeper, VA.

On May 5th, 1975, Richard L Sprehe finished his final exams at St. Louis College of Pharmacy and headed back to his home in Centralia to prepare for his Pharmacy Boards and to resume his part-time position working as an EMT. Little did Richard know that just three days later, the bound body of John Shakespeare would be found, murdered in his basement. In 2014, as Richard approached retirement, his interest is this case was rekindled and he began researching Shakespeare’s cold case murder. With the help of his attorney, John English, Richard was able to obtain all of the police records under the Freedom of Information Act, opening up a who’s who of suspects and revealing what the original investigators discovered.