Silas Carter Jayne (July 3, 1907 – July 13, 1987) was a Chicago-based stable owner, horse trainer, and horse trader who was heavily involved in criminal activity, including fraud, intimidation, arson, and murder. He covered up the infamous Peterson-Schuessler murders and, much later, arranged for the killing of his stepbrother George. In 1980, Silas was also tried and acquitted of arson, after he allegedly persuaded a former cellmate of his to start a fire in a stable, where men against whom Silas had a grudge kept their horses. Silas died of leukemia in 1987, aged 80.Notice of death of Silas Jayne, Chicago Tribune, July 14, 1987.
Life history and background Jayne was born on July 3, 1907, in Cuba Township, in Lake County, Illinois. He was one of four boys and eight girls born to Arthur and Katherine Jayne. Silas had a half-brother, George William Jayne, born in 1923 to his mother and her employer, a married attorney named George William Spunner. When Silas was tried for rape at age 17, his stepfather, acting as his attorney, wrote to the judge saying that Silas was a wild young man who would not be hurt by a year in jail. Silas was convicted and served one year at Pontiac Correctional Center.
Jayne and his younger brothers, DeForest and Frank, and half-brother, George, were skilled horse trainers and riders, who owned and operated a number of stables in the Chicago area during the 1930s. In 1932, Silas opened the Idle Hour Stable at Lincoln and Peterson avenues on Chicago's northwest side. About the same time, Silas and his brothers began operating the Elston Riding Academy at 5663 Elston Avenue in Chicago. The academy hosted the Elston Saddle Club which held an annual horse show and rodeo featuring the Jayne brothers and their students.
In 1933, Frank Jayne began operating a livestock hauling and trading business in Woodstock, Illinois. The Jayne brothers shipped feral horses from the Western United States by railroad to Woodstock, where they were herded through the streets to Frank's corral south of the city. The best horses were trained and the rest were shipped to Rockford, Illinois to be slaughtered for dog food. In 1936, George Jayne began holding annual horse shows at his Sportsman's Riding Stables in Morton Grove, Illinois. The following year, the Elston Saddle Club held a show in Woodstock. Frank Jayne purchased a farm west of Elgin, Illinois, which he called Our Day Farm.
DeForest Jayne earned many trophies for his horsemanship and was the instructor at the Elston Riding Academy. On October 15, 1938, DeForest's fiancée, Mae Sweeny, committed suicide by swallowing arsenic. Five days later, DeForest, dressed in his best Western attire, killed himself with a 12-gauge shotgun on Sweeny's grave. By the time of his death, DeForest had acquired twenty acres and a stable, that he bequeathed to his half-brother, George. After DeForest's death, Silas established Green Tree Stables at 4701 Cumberland Avenue in the Chicago suburb of Norridge. On June 3, 1940, a fire killed ten horses at the Green Tree Stables. This was the first of several suspicious fires linked to Silas. Silas and his employees were able to free 35 other horses from the burning building.
Jayne had acquired a reputation for bullying behavior. In order to intimidate rivals, he would falsely claim that he had served time for murder. In one case when he was losing in a horse show competition, Silas and his brothers beat the rider who was winning until he could no longer compete. Because of Jayne's reputation for violence, he was able to demand a 10% stake of the profits in horse shows held near Chicago.
Jayne sold virtually worthless horses to prosperous men with daughters in their early teenage years, claiming that the horses were of the top quality needed if the daughters were to become champion riders. Parents allowed their daughters to spend extended periods of time at Jayne's stables unchaperoned. Jayne boasted to his associates of having molested many of these underage girls. When fathers complained about the poor quality of horses they had bought from him, he would tell them that their daughters had become notorious among his employees for their promiscuity. Though the accusation may have been groundless, scandal-wary fathers rarely pressed the point.
It was suspected that allegations against Jayne were not investigated because he had friendly relations with police officers. He was not a made man of the Chicago Outfit, but his Idle Hour Stables were patronised by "Mad Sam" DeStefano and other prominent gangsters. It was said that the gangsters "played cowboy" there, riding around on horses and firing guns into the air.To Kill the Irishman: The War That Crippled the Mafia, Rick Porrello, 2001.
In the early 1950s, Silas wanted his half-brother, George, to purchase his Green Tree Stables, but George, whose Sportsman's Riding Stables was prospering, refused. Shortly thereafter, while George and his family were wintering in Florida, his house, located at the Sportsman's Riding Stables, burned down. The cause of the fire was never determined, but George suspected that Silas was responsible. A month after the fire, George sold Sportsman's Riding Stables, and after that he bought Green Tree Stables from Silas, renaming it Happy Days Stables. In 1954, Silas moved his Idle Hour Stables to a larger facility at 8600 West Higgins Road in Park Ridge, Illinois, not far from George's Happy Days Stables.
Ethan Hansen and his sons, Curtis and Kenneth, operated a stable not far from Silas' relocated Idle Hour Stables. Curtis was an enforcer for the Chicago Outfit tied to Sam DeStefano and Frank Schweihs. The Hansen stable went out of business after several accidents resulted in the deaths of two young stable hands, after which Curtis Hansen maintained a close relationship with Silas Jayne and Kenneth Hansen was hired to work at the Idle Hour Stables.
Peterson–Schuessler murders On October 18, 1955, the naked bodies of three young boys, John Schuessler, 13, his brother Anton Jr., 11, and their friend Robert Peterson, 14, were found in a ditch in the Robinson Woods Forest Preserve on the northwest side of Chicago. When found, they had been missing for two days. The boys had traveled from Jefferson Park to downtown Chicago to see Walt Disney Productions' The African Lion at the Loop Theater, 165 North State Street, on the afternoon of October 16. Nearly forty years later, ATF agents investigating the 1977 disappearance of candy heiress Helen Brach were told by informants that Silas Jayne's former employee, Kenneth Hansen, had boasted of committing the murders at the Idle Hour Stables. Hansen had threatened others that they would "end up like the Peterson boy." A second informant, Red Wemette, had told the FBI of Hansen's boasts in the 1970s, but apparently no action was taken.
It emerged that Hansen, who was 22 years old at the time, had met Peterson and the Schuesslers while they were hitchhiking, having last been seen by a classmate at the Monte Cristo Bowling Alley on 3326 West Montrose, about eight miles from the Loop Theater. Hansen lured them into the Idle Hour Stables under the pretext of showing them horses. When Peterson discovered Hansen sexually abusing the Schuessler brothers, Hansen attacked all three and killed them. Jayne became enraged at Hansen when he discovered what he had done, but realized the murders on his property had the potential to ruin him and concealed the crime. The bodies were put in a station wagon and disposed of. The original forensic investigators in the case believed that marks on the bodies had been caused by the floor mats of a Packard station wagon model that had been owned by both Hansen and Jayne in 1955.Three Boys Missing: The Tragedy That Exposed the Pedophilia Underworld by James A. Jack, 2006Shattered sense of innocence: the 1955 murders of three Chicago Children, Richard Lindberg, Gloria Jean Sykes, 2006, The barn in which the murders allegedly occurred burned down on May 15, 1956, in a suspected arson.
Neighbors had reported to the police that they had heard screams from the stables on the day the boys disappeared, but the leads were not followed up, despite the stable's proximity to the site where the bodies were found. According to a detective who worked on the case, Kenneth Hansen had preyed on hundreds of boys before his 1995 arrest and conviction for the murders. Hansen's conviction was overturned five years later on the grounds that the jury should not have heard prejudicial testimony regarding his frequent cruising the streets in search of boys to prey upon, whom he termed "chicken". Found guilty at a 2002 retrial with a subsequent affirmation of the verdict in a 2004 appeal, Hansen was sentenced to life imprisonment. He died at Pontiac Correctional Center on September 12, 2007.Hansen's Trial For '55 Peterson-schuessler Murder Nears A Close, September 13, 1995|ChicagoTribuneChicago Tribune, Feds' informant kept stable of secrets June 27, 2007Death Closes the Case of Boys’ Murders ASSOCIATED PRESS, Published: September 16, 2007
Attacks on George Jayne In October 1959, George Jayne moved his stable business from the Happy Days Stables to the 95-acre Tri-Color Farm near his home in Inverness, Illinois. Silas' competition with George, both in business and at horse shows, became intense and led to a prolonged effort to kill George. Cheryl Rude was a professional rider who went to work for George after she was fired by Silas. At the Oak Brook Hounds Horse Show in 1961, Rude won a jumping class over protests from Silas, and George's daughter beat Silas' best horse to take the top prize, after which Silas stood in the middle of the horse ring and shouted at George "I'll never talk to you again, you bastard!" This was the beginning of a campaign of harassment against George.
In 1962, shots were fired at George's office and the office was burglarized. At various times, George's tires were punctured, lug nuts on his truck tires were loosened, sugar was poured into his gas tank, cars attempted to run him off the road at night, two of his horses were poisoned, and dynamite was left by his back door, but the fuse fizzled out. In March 1963, while working late at his office, George, perhaps sensing danger, departed in a borrowed car leaving the lights on and his own car at the office. That night twenty-eight bullets were fired into the office. In 1965, Eddie Moran confessed that he and another man were paid $300 to kill George, and it was they who had fired the shots into George's office in 1963. In May 1963, when George's horse beat Silas' at the Lake Forest Horse Show, Silas again threatened George, "I'll kill you, you son of a bitch!" After this on five or more occasions Silas made more threats to kill George.
Murder of Cheryl Rude On June 14, 1965, George Jayne asked his 22-year-old employee Cheryl Rude to move his Cadillac. When she turned the ignition key, a bomb composed of three sticks of dynamite exploded, killing her. George believed that he was the intended target of the bomb, and that Silas was responsible for planting it. Sheriff's investigators agreed with this assessment.