The Beach Remains
The Beach Remains is a cinematic true-crime investigation into unsolved murders, buried corruption, and forgotten FBI files along Maryland’s coast. Through FOIAs, underwater dives, and interviews with insiders, the series uncovers a haunting mystery that may still be unfolding.
The Beach Remains
Episode 5: By the Book
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A retired judge’s decades-old allegations reopen a dark chapter in Ocean City history involving political power, vice, intimidation, and controversial State’s Attorney Jack Sanford. As the investigation turns toward Sanford’s close associate Leroy Tyler and the unsolved murder of Rosemary Moon McIntyre, it raises the possibility that a volatile Worcester County may have overlooked critical clues for decades.
If a book captivates you, you read it. If it's a revelation, you follow it. You live by the book. Today, when the beach remains, I'm Ricky Conlin. In the early evening of Wednesday, December 10th, 1969, Rosemary Moon McIntyre drove to the Salisbury Mall for Christmas shopping. A familiar Ocean City local, she worked part-time at the neighborhood drugstore. She and her husband Bruce lived on Philadelphia Avenue, near the boardwalk, with their two-year-old son. Rosemary had grown up in Salisbury, 20 minutes inland, where her parents still lived. So when she didn't come home that night, Bruce assumed she'd stayed with them. But as midnight neared, worry took over. Around 11:30, Bruce called her father, Thomas Moon, who immediately hit the road from Salisbury to look for her. Just before midnight, he found Rosemary's car abandoned along Route 50, almost exactly halfway between Salisbury and Ocean City. The area back then was dark and desolate, except for a single lit phone booth across the highway. The car was operable, keys in the ignition, the driver's window half down, Christmas presents still in the passenger seat. No sign of struggle. No Rosemary. Three days later, on the morning of December 13th, two teenage hunters found Rosemary Moon McIntyre's body floating in Tappen Creek, less than a mile outside of downtown Berlin. She'd been stabbed multiple times with a five to seven-inch blade and was wearing the same clothes from the night she vanished. A knife matching that description was found nearby. Her purse, suede jacket, and shoes were never recovered. Based on Rigamortis, an estimated time of death, investigators believed she had been held alive for at least 24 hours after her disappearance. Despite months of searching into early 1970, the case went cold. And like the later 1978 killing of Donna Riley, it remains unsolved. In the last episode, we briefly introduced the Rosemary Moon McIntyre case when we met retired Maryland judge Dale Cathell.
SPEAKER_01Ocean City and Worcester County. That's where I grew up. I would never want to live any place else or die anyplace else.
SPEAKER_02We also discussed Dale's book, Waiting in the Swamp. The history within this book, particularly the history described in the chapters Dale recalls the Rosemary Moon McIntyre case and its surrounding characters, will weigh heavily on the remainder of this podcast. And we'll discuss all of it soon enough. But first, it's important to understand the story of Jack Sanford. The information I'm about to share comes directly from Dale Cathell's book, Waiting in the Swamp, combined with multiple phone and in-person interviews I conducted with Dale over the course of this multi-year investigation. Buckle up. Because these details matter. If there's one thing Dale was adamant about, is that Jack Sanford wasn't from Berlin. He wasn't a born local.
SPEAKER_01He was from Baltimore.
SPEAKER_02Jack was born and raised two hours west of Ocean City in Baltimore. He moved to Berlin to help run a family pig farm. Eventually, he met and married Elizabeth, of the well-known Davis family, a name that carried real weight in Ocean City.
SPEAKER_01He moved down here and married Elizabeth Davis. Davis and Lynch Fish Company was a big deal down here at that time. And her father despised Jack Sanford. He would not go to the wedding, they had to elope. And when he came back from being married, he would not see them.
SPEAKER_02But Sanford was ambitious and smart. He earned a law degree, opened up private practice in downtown Berlin, and quickly built local respect. Riding that momentum, he ran for state's attorney and won. Through the 1940s and 50s, Ocean City, Maryland was still small, isolated, and morally gray. And the state's attorney post was part-time, letting Jack Sanford keep his private practice on the side. Ocean City's early reputation was built on off-the-books gambling.
SPEAKER_01During those gambling days, it was sort of on the fringe of illegality or crime or whatever you want to call it. And I can remember being 14 or 15 years old, sitting at a bar in one of the casinos on the boardwalk, eating a peach ice cream cone and drinking a beer when I was 14 or 15.
SPEAKER_02That sounds like a good time. Back in those days, nearly every local business owner had some sort of gambling-related income in slots. And there were two fully functioning casinos operating in the wide open unimpeded.
SPEAKER_01And he said he made more money off his cut from those two slot machines than he made from the restaurant service.
SPEAKER_02Locals didn't mind. As Dale put it, they'd have welcomed Sodom and Gomorrah if it kept the economy alive. What happened on the island stayed on the island. When Sandford took office, he made headlines shutting down Ocean City's illegal casinos. Almost all of them. It sounded noble, but it wasn't. Jack closed every casino except one, the one owned by Elizabeth's brother, Ed Davis, in West Ocean City.
SPEAKER_01Her brother Ed Davis had a gambling joint out in West Ocean City. And when Sanford closed down all the other gambling joints, he led Davis's joint stayed in operation.
SPEAKER_02Ed Davis's casino ran two extra years, a monopoly that reportedly made a fortune. By the early 60s, Jack Sanford leveraged that success into a Maryland State Senate seat. He used this time in Annapolis to forge close relationships with state police brass and to handpick friendly judges. Sanford knew all the higher-ups. Those relationships would pay off for years. When Sanford lost his Senate seat in the late 60s due to reapportionment, he simply slid back into his old role as state's attorney. As before, he kept his private law practice and blurred the line between justice and profit. He dismissed cases for paying clients and weaponized indictments against his enemies. People began to fear Jack Sanford.
SPEAKER_01Everybody was basically afraid of Jack Sanford because he could get you in a lot of trouble. You may get out of it in the end, but it costs you a lot of money for lawyers and so forth.
SPEAKER_02With allies in law enforcement and judges of his own choosing, Jack Sanford's power only grew. By the 1970s, Jack Sanford may not have been the richest man in Ocean City, but his command of its justice system made him the most powerful. Though feared by those he bullied, Jack lived quietly, behind the scenes, and off the radar of most Ocean City locals. In the 50s and 60s, Jack and his wife Elizabeth lived in an upscale home in downtown Berlin, about 100 yards from Main Street and a second-story law office. Then, in early 1970, without explanation, they boarded up their Berlin home and moved full-time to their summer house on 6th Street in Ocean City. The 6th Street house was grand, room for Elizabeth's ailing sister, whom she cared for, and a small apartment above the detached garage for their live-in gardener, Leroy Tyler. Jack's new home base put him three blocks from City Hall, one block from the boardwalk in the beach. By appearances, Jack and Elizabeth were polished, upstanding, upper crust Ocean City citizens. Back in the early 60s, all the Ocean City power players gathered Mid-Island Friday nights for poker. Anybody who was anybody was at that table. The big personality was Mayor Harry Kelly, an eight-term mayor beloved in local history. The drawbridge connecting West Ocean City to the island now bears his name. But Jack Sanford was always there too. He and Mayor Kelly were close friends, longtime collaborators in City Hall. That friendship came to a screeching halt at the end of 1977 when Ocean City, Maryland became engulfed in one of its biggest public scandals. Dale Cathell was then both Mayor Kelly's and the city's chief legal counsel, a front-row witness from 1970 through 1978. The mayor's and Dale's collision course with Jack Sanford in 1977 set off a surreal chain of events. Death threats, whispers of paid contract killers, and the possible unmasking of what really happened to Rosemary Moon McIntyre in her 1969 Cold Case Homicide. But before we get to that, one last character needs to enter the story. That character is the Sanford Sliven gardener, Leroy Tyler. In March of 1962, Ocean City, Maryland was slammed by a massive nor'eastern, known to locals as the March Bides Storm 62. Three straight days of rain, high tide, and destruction. The state declared an emergency and sent in help, including inmates from the Maryland prison system to assist in the cleanup. Among those prisoners was Leroy Tyler, or so the story goes. Shortly after, using Jack's influence with state police and corrections officials, they arranged for Leroy's parole, placing him formally under their own custody.
SPEAKER_01He would have never got Leroy Tyler as Lisbeth's servant if Sanford hadn't dealt with the people that controlled the corrections industry to get him down here.
SPEAKER_02From that point on, Leroy lived with the Sanfords, first in Berlin, and after 1969, above the garage at their 6th Street property. He maintained their grounds, helped with errands, and lived under their legal supervision. Leroy's background was grim. He'd been arrested as a teenager for the brutal killing of his grandmother. She had been assaulted violently with a brick during an argument over money. State parole records confirm that Leroy was in the Sanford's custody even before 1962, though it's unclear for how long or under what conditions. Whatever their connection, it was close. From 1962 through 1977, Leroy Tyler appeared to live quietly, working for the Sanfords, driving their car, and enjoying a freedom that was unimaginable compared to the life sentence he otherwise faced. March 29th, 1977, Leroy Tyler's quiet existence finally exploded. Since getting his license in the late 60s, Leroy had a reputation for ignoring the occasional red light. Small town type stuff. When he got caught, tickets seemed to disappear. Just the perks of working for the state's attorney. Friends of Jack Sanford rarely saw the consequences of parking and traffic violations. But this night was different. Leroy was driving Elizabeth's Cadillac when a patrol car spotted a violation. Instead of pulling over, a drunken Leroy, fresh from the bars, hit the gas. He tore through downtown Ocean City, racing the Cadillac down the actual boardwalk at 80 miles per hour, or so it's reported. Eventually, he ran out of boardwalk, crashing into the sand and getting hauled off to the local police station. Word spread fast. Elizabeth Sanford stormed in from her home just blocks away, furious, demanding Leroy's release. And despite protest, the Night Watch complied. What choice did they have? Moments later, as Leroy walked out, he sucker punched Officer Victor Bunning, broke his nose, and coolly went home with Elizabeth. That crossed a line. Letting Sanford's people dodge tickets was one thing, but assaulting a police officer in the station, that couldn't be ignored. Bunning sued Leroy Tyler. By mid-March, it was all over the local papers. Yet within days, Warren Bud Crawford, an assistant in Sanford's office, dropped all charges. This moment, March 1977, was the line in the sand. Mayor Harry Kelly finally saw it clearly. Sanford was abusing power. But Jack refused to back down, even personally paying for Leroy's defense attorney. That's when Dale Cathell stepped in. He'd seen Sanford's tactics before as an attorney, how far he'd go when challenged. But even Dale had no idea what was coming next. Spring 1977 unraveled fast. Mayor Kelly went public, criticizing Sanford's handling of the Leroy Tyler case, the two traded blows in the press. Then came a leak. Allegations that one of Sanford's own employees had stolen jewelry from police evidence. What can you tell me about Bud Crawford and his role in Ocean City at that time?
SPEAKER_01He was an assistant state's attorney, and he got in trouble because some of the evidence in some of the cases comprised was comprised of jewelry, and there was some problem with what happened to that jewelry.
SPEAKER_02More stories surfaced. Sanford struck back, accusing the mayor and police of corruption and incompetence. The feud turned public and vicious. Mayor Kelly requested a state-level investigation into Jack Sanford. Weeks later, in May of 1977, the Baltimore Sun dropped a bombshell detailing Sanford's pattern of dismissing cases for everyone from local celebrities to powerful friends, including chicken man Frank Perdue's traffic tickets. By then, the Friday night's poker games between Sanford and Kelly were long dead. Amid the chaos, Mayor Kelly received an anonymous tip. A local businessman named Tukey Dennis claimed to know things about the 1969 murder of Rosemary Moon McIntyre. This immediately caught Dale's attention. Back in 1969, that case was huge. And Jack Sanford had personally approached Dale with a plea deal. Sanford wanted one of Dale's clients, a Mr. Blackwell, to plead guilty in exchange for a light sentence. But Blackwell swore he was innocent. Airtight alibi. No link to Rosemary Moon McIntyre. Dale moved on then. But in 1977, with a new view on Sanford, he tracked down Tukey Dennis to hear exactly what he knew. Tukey was a local beer distributor, one of Berlin's more comfortable citizens. When Dale approached him, Tukey said that in early 1970, weeks after Rosemary's disappearance, he'd overheard Jack and Elizabeth Sanford at breakfast. Jack said Leroy Tyler killed Rosemary Moon McIntyre, and Elizabeth urged him to keep it quiet. It was an election year. Dale relayed that story to state police. Soon after, Tukey went into the hospital for a minor procedure. According to Dale, Jack Sanford learned about the visit. Lately tipped by friends in the state police press. He showed up at Tukey's bedside, telling him, I hope you die, along with other threats. Tukey suffered a heart attack soon after. Dale Cathle filed a formal complaint with state police, but he says it was never answered. Tukey never testified again. Reconsidering Sanford's old plea offered a Blackwell, Dale joined assistant police chief Ray Donovan to re-examine the McIntyre files at the Salisbury Barracks. They spent hours combing through reports and found nothing. No mention of Leroy Tyler anywhere. A few days later, they got an anonymous call.
SPEAKER_01They were anonymous. He was a good state policeman.
SPEAKER_02The caller said they hadn't seen all the evidence yet. That a box labeled Leroy Tyler had been withheld. And that's where they'd find Jack Sanford's. Wallet. Then the line went dead. Tukey had also mentioned hearing that same rumor that Sanford's alligator wallet was found just feet from Rosemary Moon McIntyre's body in Tappen Creek. Sanford claimed Leroy stole that wallet the day before the murder. So Dale and Donovan went back to Salisbury. They asked for the Leroy Tyler box and the Sanford wallet. Behind a closed door, they heard arguing. Then the door opened. Out came the box. And sitting on top was Jack Sanford's alligator wallet. Inside the box was a letter signed by Sanford himself, directing police to stop investigating Leroy Tyler. Sanford wrote that Tyler had been with him the entire night of Rosemary's disappearance.
SPEAKER_01Jack Sanford had told him that Leroy Tyler had was with him the night of Rosemary Moon's abduction, and that they were not stopped investigating.
SPEAKER_02The deeper they looked, the worse it got. Witness statements placed Leroy Tyler talking with Rosemary in the Salisbury Mall parking lot, the last person seen with her alive. Another report described a man and woman climbing the stairs to the second floor flat above Sanford's office. The same night Rosemary Moon McIntyre vanished. Roughly a hundred yards from the Sanford's home in downtown Berlin.
SPEAKER_01But one of the things that came up in the state police investigation that the Sanfords owned, just south of there on Main Street, a long building that had stores at that time, storage and stuff on the first floor, and that's where Jack Sanford's office was on the first floor. And there was an upstairs area, and uh a male and a woman had been seen walking up into that on the stairs into that apartment. And Donovan and I thought that's probably where Leroy Tyler kept Rosemary Moon McIntyre for two or three days before he killed her.
SPEAKER_02The male seen walking to the property that night fit Leroy's description. That report labeled Leroy Tyler the prime suspect in Rosemary Moon McIntyre's homicide. Her car had been found with the keys still in the ignition. No sign of struggle. Investigators theorized she'd been lured from her car into Leroy's, held at one of Sanford's Berlin properties, murdered two days later, and dropped in Tappen Creek, a mile away. Riga Morta suggested she was kept alive at least a day after her abduction. Leroy's car vanished after the murder, never found again.
SPEAKER_01And we never found the car. We found that it had been junked by Jack and Elizabeth. And we never found the car. We went looking to see if there was any blood or like stuff like that.
SPEAKER_02All that evidence and all those witnesses. And Sanford's excuse a letter for Leroy Tyler, especially coming from the capacity of the state's attorney's office, shut all of that down.
SPEAKER_01And the state police, this is my view now, had already determined that Leroy Tyler had killed her. And they were upset that the prosecutor was doing whatever he was doing, stopped the case. Those types of things are why I started getting confidential calls from this, I think, from the state police. They did not like what was going on, at least the ones that were calling me. The ones that were the real state policemen, they didn't like what was happening. And they thought that for some reason they knew we were having problems with the state attorney, so they called me, figuring I could take care of it. And I did whatever I could.
SPEAKER_02Tukey Dennis, still frightened, never testified. Jack and Elizabeth Sanford would have denied everything anyway. And eight years after the fact, the trail went cold again. I've never seen that Leroy Tyler evidence box, nor the alligator wallet. Dale said he returned them to Salisbury after review, and he believes they were destroyed. Everything I've told you here is technically hearsay. But every word matches what Dale wrote in chapters 47 through 49 of waiting through the swamp. Those details never changed in any of my interviews with him. No one, publicly or privately, ever disputed them. Also worth noting that Dale Castle was never sued for libel. By early 1978, after the public status, the lawsuit and a special counsel probe conveniently dismissed by a Sanford-friendly judge. Elizabeth Sanford was excused from testifying, armed with a doctor's note, claiming that appearing in court would cause her extreme emotional distress. The judge bought it. By the end of 77, the scandal seemed to fade. But as 1978 rolled in, anonymous calls about Leroy Tyler and Rosemary Moon McIntyre returned. And things got dangerous fast. Rumors of paid hits began to swirl.
SPEAKER_01And at one time, right after I got the threat from this law unit, this Lisbeth had put up $5,000. This relative of mine in Sanford's office called me up and asked me to be careful. Never called me before or since about that.
SPEAKER_02Talk around hitman threats were all happening just in the general same time period, that early 78 period. Is that what you recall?
SPEAKER_01I recall that about the alleged threats against myself and Mayor Kelly.
SPEAKER_02In the middle of the craziness, Mayor Harry Kelly moved to revoke Elizabeth Sanford's gun license, citing her documented mental instability from the Bunning Tyler trial, her access to a hunting rifle in the 6th Street House, and her proximity to a convicted felon, Leroy Tyler, still under their custody. The court dismissed the case in record time, thanks again to Stanford's control of the local bench.
SPEAKER_01That's when I started carrying a gun.
SPEAKER_02By summer, the feud had become a circus. Appeals, headlines, and threats piling up. Finally, in August, Mayor Kelly and Dale Cathell persuaded the governor to authorize an outside review, the Glass Investigation, led by special investigator Gerald Glass.
SPEAKER_01I think that Mayor Kelly requested the Glass investigation because he wasn't satisfied with whatever had happened theretofore. And I was in interviewed by, I'm sure, by Bittison, but I was also interviewed by Glass.
SPEAKER_02And though Mayor Kelly was put under scrutiny of his own, it was Jack Sanford that ended up with an indictment. Nothing surfaced on Rosemary Moon McIntyre, but prosecutors accused Sanford of urging his secretary, Connie McFarlane, to lie about his maintaining private clients while serving as state's attorney. Illegal at that time. It was the only charge in the glass investigation that stuck. The case for perjury went to trial. But when it finally began, the single witness who could convict him was suddenly gone. Connie McFarlane was ruled mentally unfit to testify. Connie McFarlane's psych evaluation came from the same small medical practice that had excused Elizabeth Sanford from testifying a year earlier in the Victor Bunning versus Leroy Tyler case.
SPEAKER_01He was crazy or not.
SPEAKER_02Without Connie's testimony, Jack Sanford walked free. He was never convicted of anything in 1977 or 1978. But politically, Jack Sanford was finished. Jack Sanford lost in 78. Do you think the the glass investigation impacted that?
SPEAKER_01The all the publicity was out about Leroy Todd and Sanford was and the fact that a brave lawyer over in Berlin ran against Jack Sanford, caused Jack Sanford's defeat.
SPEAKER_02Jack Sanford lost the 1978 election for state's attorney. And never again did he hold public office. Still, resentment lingered. And the Rosemary Moon McIntyre case stayed cold. Dale Cathell's book, written a decade ago, recounted it all. Undisputed, yet unresolved. The full extent of Jack Sanford's thumb on the scales of justice may never be fully known. But it should never be ignored. Because when we widen the lens on Jack Sanford's second term as county prosecutor, we uncover the ripple effects and a third cold case that might tie it all together. As this story takes yet another turn. Next time on The Beach Remains, I'm Ricky Conlan. The Beach Remains podcast is produced by Dream Oak Productions, All Rights Reserved, the song Gods and Ghosts performed by Koydog. Follow us on the Beach Remains Facebook page for show updates and fan community. Up ahead on the Beach Remains.
SPEAKER_00There's two huge boxes, bankers' boxes, in the uh in the CID offices, back in the old station and the new station. And anyone that comes into the unit, the first thing they do is tell you, familiarize yourself with this police reporting.
SPEAKER_02Did she ever walk that router? It was always drive back from work at night.
SPEAKER_00Oh, definitely drive that he drove in, heard a door slam, and then you looked through the window and saw the car shaking violently and then stopped shaking, and then we went back to door another. A dive team located the knife at the end in the canal at the end of the street.
SPEAKER_02And then um, I asked this before, I think I know the answer, but uh Leroy Tyler and Jack Sanford, were they ever mentioned in this case?
SPEAKER_00I I never saw their names, and I contacted quite a few of the older detectives that were involved in the case when it was fresh.
