Private Frank Bonio
Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, Monday, 19 January 1874, page 8
SOLDIER-Early yesterday morning an Italian boy rapped at the door of the butcher shop 94 West Front Street, Cincinnati, and called out to George Clemenz, the butcher, that there was a dead man lying in the next door hallway. Clemenz ran out and opening the door and found at his feet the body of a man dressed in military clothes and stiff in death. Blood had run from his mouth and the head was lying in blood. The hallway was one leading into an old fashioned house, once the home of well to do people, but was given up to people of the lowest grade.
Depraved Italians and negroes living in wretchedness. At the side of the house runs an alley way, which leads to a collection of tumble down shanties, jammed full of people of the same class and nationalities. In the front is a beer shop kept by one Rueschmann and in this place the dead man was last seen alive. The body was dragged out into the daylight and examined. Both eyes were black and the head was cut and bruised in the back. Immediately notice was sent to the Coroner and Dr. Maley shortly arrived. There were several persons who had knowledge of the affair and a private soldier from the Newport Barracks, William H C Riley, acting Orderly Sergeant recognized the corpse as that of one Frank Bonio.
An Italian, a private from the Barracks, aged about thirty-five, of ordinarily temperate habits and who had been absent from Newport about twenty-four hours. Dr. Maley questioned different persons about the place, but no one appeared to know any thing about it. Rueschmann and his wife, the beer shop keepers, knew least of all, but their ignorance was only equated by the others, persons who professed to have left before anything happened. The investigation had not gone far, however, before suspicion pointed to one George Gramp.
A German butcher living next door, the brother-in-law of Clemenz and Rueschmann. He was accordingly ordered into arrest and locked up at the Hammond Street Station. From hi statements, drawn from him bit by bit through the iron bars of the cell and from the sworn testimony taken by the Coroner, it seemed that Saturday was Gramp's birthday and after shutting up his butcher shop, he made arrangements for a little supper and spree in the beer shop.
This began at 9 pm and he was surrounded by from eight to twelve persons quite filling the barroom. Sometime after the crown had collected the door opened and there entered the soldier Bonio, and Italian shoe maker, Gerelam Rolandelli. They sat at the vacant table and were served with beer. They drank and smoked for some time and talked together. Gramp became noisy singing loudly. In some way a quarrel sprung up between the butcher and the soldier. At eleven a knock came at the door and a policeman's voice was heard cautioning them to keep quiet. But the quarrel continued and the butcher threatened to make the soldier shut up.
The former is a well built man with plenty of muscle and active. The soldier seemed to fear violence from him, for on the entrance of another Italian acquaintance of his, Andrew Jeromia, Bonio begged that he would not go away; that he would stop by him, saying the butcher was drunk. The three sat together drinking more beer and the quarrel became fierce, and Gramps advanced toward them. Jermonia jumped up and ran out. Gramp strode up to the soldier and seized one of his hands. It is probable here they had a fierce struggle, accounting for the black eye. The soldier was overpowered and Gramp opened the door and pushed Bono out. The soldier fell backward.
William H C Riley testified; I am a private in the United States service and stationed at the Newport Barracks. I am acting Orderly Sergeant. I recognized the deceased as Frank Bonio, a private and stationed at the same quarters. We missed him at a quarter past last evening. We did not know anything of his whereabouts, until this morning, when some discharged soldiers told me he was dead. I was sent over to see the deceased by General Whistler. Deceased was a man of temperate and steady habits. I understood he had fifteen or twenty dollars in his pocket previous to his death.