By Patrick Anderson
Robert Wadsworth says his aunt's unsolved murder has weighed on him and his family — through sadness and frustration — for more than 33 years. So when authorities Friday announced the arrest of two men in connection with the 1976 cold case, those buried emotions came quickly to the surface.
"She had the biggest heart of anyone I knew — I loved her," Wadsworth said. "My father went to the state police about it so many days. It is hard to know how much it hurt my father."
Wadsworth wasn't alone.
"My mother took it extremely hard," said John Carr of Thurston Street, another one of Eleanor Wadsworth's nephews. "She was never the same again; no one was. It was very depressing and we couldn't get much information."
Since Eleanor Wadsworth, known as "Elee," was shot to death in an office at Pike's Funeral Home on Middle Street, where she worked for years, lingering suspicions about who pulled the trigger — and why they got away with it — have swirled around Gloucester.
Most of those suspicions surrounded Norman Pike, 52, one of the two men now arrested after a year-long investigation of the cold case started by Gloucester Police Chief Michael Lane while he was still a detective.
Pike, grandson of the funeral home's former owner, Harold Pike, disappeared days after the murder, and his location was unknown to police when the case was reactivated last spring. When police arrested Pike on March 8, it was in San Francisco, where he had been living under the alias Dan Franklin, according to authorities.
"My father swore it was the grandson," Robert Wadsworth said. Again, he was not alone.
"Privately, among ourselves, we had a suspicion (Norman Pike) was a strong candidate and this bears out our thoughts," said Larry Sherman, who worked at the funeral home from 1964 to 1977 and now lives in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Nineteen years old at the time of the murder, Pike was known by employees at the funeral home to visit the business to ask Eleanor Wadsworth for money, which she usually gave him. For friends and family — who all described Eleanor Wadsworth's generosity as the her defining characteristic — the fact that the murder appears to have stemmed from a robbery has been a troubling irony.
According to investigators, on Thursday, Dec. 2, 1976 — between 11 a.m. and noon — three men entered Pike's just after a funeral party had left the home for the cemetery. The men proceeded to a second floor office, where they found a safe containing $1,500 that had just been deposited the night before. When Eleanor Wadsworth walked in and found them taking the money, she was beaten and then shot several times, police said.
Pike is currently being held in California and fighting his extradition to Massachusetts. A spokesman for Essex County District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett said his office is trying to bring Pike back through a Governor's Warrant, but that the process could take as long as 90 days.
Friday afternoon, four days after Pike was arrested on the West Coast, Gloucester police also arrested Kevin Ireland, 54, of Oak Street. They said he was also one of the three men who entered the funeral home, and charged him with murder.
Ireland's mother, Patricia Ireland, said that — from what she had read and been told — police believe Pike was the shooter. Authorities, however, have not confirmed that.
"I didn't know (Norman Pike) and I didn't know my son ever knew him," Patricia Ireland told the Times in a phone interview. "I don't think my son did that."
Ireland was being held locally and is slated to be arraigned Monday morning in Gloucester District Court. Police say the third suspect, whose identity they have not released, is dead.
For much more coverage and reaction, look to Monday's print and online editions of the Gloucester Daily Times and gloucestertimes.com.
Patrick Anderson can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3455, or panderson@gloucestertimes.com.
