Some murders leave behind evidence.
Others leave behind questions.
In the early hours of a quiet fall morning in St. Louis Hills, a father stepped outside after hearing a car in his driveway — and discovered a nightmare that would haunt the city for decades.
Gary Consolino and Ellen Dooling had been executed inside a blue Oldsmobile Cutlass just feet from Ellen’s front door. No robbery. No witnesses. No clear motive. Despite one of the most intense homicide investigations in St. Louis history, the case remains unsolved more than forty years later.
This is one of the chilling cases featured in 25 Frozen 1 Thawed — a collection of cold cases, forgotten investigations, and the haunting questions that still remain.
HORROR IN THE HILLS
It was a crisp fall night, the kind of night good for sleeping. But John Dooling was awakened by a noise in his driveway. He looked at his alarm clock. It was 4 a.m. His daughter Ellen had been out on a date, and was supposed to be home at midnight. Startled by the noise, Dooling was suddenly worried. He looked out the window and saw a blue Oldsmobile Cutlass parked in front of his house, its engine still running. He recognized the car as Gary Consolino’s, Ellen’s date for the night. Concerned, he went outside, saw Ellen in the passenger seat, opened the door, pulled her out and screamed.
And screamed. And screamed again. A piercing scream so horrible and loud, lights flickered up and down the 6200 block of Walsh Street in the quiet St. Louis Hills neighborhood.
Gary and Ellen had been shot and killed. Bullets entered the passenger window. Ellen was shot in the head, Gary in the neck. Scraps of McDonalds food was spread through the car. There was no sign of a robbery. No sign of an assault. No sign of a struggle. There were no witnesses. There was no noise to awaken the sleepy neighborhood until John’s anguish rang out.
Sirens soon followed his cries, and police cars flooded the area. By the time the sun rose, the neighborhood was being canvassed. As the days went by, police would interview hundreds of people. Nearby Francis Park was combed inch by inch. Lie detector tests were given. School friends were questioned. The victims and their family’s private lives were probed. Rewards were offered. A hypnotist was brought in to question neighbors about any memories they had from their sleep. The investigation was as intense as any city homicide investigator could ever remember. Now, more than 40 years later, there are still no clear answers.
St. Louis homicide detectives were stumped. Where was the motive?
Numerous homicide detectives held the Consolino-Dooling case file over the years. The first was Herb Riley, who called not solving the case one of the biggest disappointments of his career. Riley was followed by Dan Nichols who worked tirelessly on the case before he too, retired. In 1987, seven years after Gary and Ellen were murdered, with their case still cold, homicide detective Chris Pappas asked to take over the investigation.
Pappas’ long and winding investigative road would eventually lead him to a man named Ronald Adcox who sat in the notorious Marion, Illinois Penitentiary. Pappas began digging and discovered that Adcox lived in south St. Louis at the same time as the murders, in a neighborhood right between the Consolino and Dooling homes. According to his friends, Adcox liked to hang out at Francis Park, just a block from where Dooling lived.
Pappas got in his car and made the two hour trek to Marion, entering multiple security stages to reach Adcox, who was housed deep in the bowels of the penitentiary, where the most dangerous inmates in a building of a thousand inmates, called home. Pappas sat down in a small guarded room. Across from him was Adcox, shackled and cuffed, a very large man with very long hair, who had been living in an eight-by-eight cell 23 hours a day.
“I have been waiting for you to come,” Adcox smiled.
After their initial hello’s, Adcox put his cards on the table.
“He looked me in the eye,” Pappas said. “And he says to me ‘I am a killer. And I will kill again if I have to.”
Pappas got right to the point. He came to talk about the Gary Consolino and Ellen Dooling murders from St. Louis in 1980.
“He told me he would not have done it if he was sober, but he said if he was drunk and high, he might have,” Pappas said. “I kept pressing him, and he just laughed. He told me he was going to make me prove it.”
Today, Adcox, transferred again, sits in a Texas prison, serving a life sentence. 40 years after Gary Consolino and Ellen Dooling were killed, Pappas still refers to Adcox as a suspect, and still remembers the final words from his mouth when they spoke.
“He told me If he knew he was going to spend the rest of his life locked up in prison, he might fess up.”
He will. And he has not.
Back in the quiet, peaceful neighborhood of St. Louis Hills, crime rarely returned. It is considered among the safest neighborhoods in the city.
If you’re fascinated by unsolved crimes, cold case investigations, and the mysteries that refuse to die, 25 Frozen 1 Thawed belongs on your shelf. Some stories fade with time. Others grow colder.
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