This story started as just a little mention of a 14 year old boy, Leo Pakizer in The Detroit Times in January 1908. I was internally giggling at the ambiguous luck in the first story that I found about Leo and when I looked him up to see if his life got better...it didn't. It took me down a rabbit hole of crime, exoneration, and murder. I'll start with the first story.
BOY PLUNGES THROUGH WINDOW SLIP MAKES LEO PAKIZERVICTIM OF SERIOUS MISHAP IN DOWNTOWN BUILDING.Leo Pakizer, aged 14, of No. 686 Theodore-st., employed by A. Dietsche, souvenir postal card manufacturer, plunged through a window. in the second floor of the Avenue theater building, where the workshop is located, early Thursday afternoon and, was seriously, injured.. The boy had just eaten lunch and was going to the wash basin when, just in front of the window, which is flush with the floor, he slipped on a piece of plaster that had fallen from the ceiling and was precipitated headlong through the opening, taking sash and all with him. The boy landed on the sidewalk on Jefferson-ave. East End ambulance took him to St. Mary's hospital, where it was found that he had sustained a dislocated hip, a broken wrist, a bad cut over the eye and possible internal injuries. It is thought he will recover.
Ouch. I picture young Leo tossing the wrapper from his sandwich in the trash and picking it up after he likely missed due to his apparent ineptitude. As he throws it, a piece of the ceiling falls to the floor and lands directly under his next step, leading to a catastrophic yet comedic gravity induced building evacuation. I also imagine other locals meandering the street during their lunch and just happen to witness the "precipitation" of a 14 -year-old boy. This may seem unlucky, but a fall from that height typically has a survival rate of about 17%. Leo was terribly unlucky to have fallen out the window, but was lucky to have survived that fall.
I wondered if after Lucky Leo pulled through that he made a triumphant return to his life and became a motivational speaker or something just as optimistic. He didn't. It gets a bit blurry as to what happened 14 years later in 1922, but it's clear that Leo was up to no good and was likely a thug when he was struck with another bout of highly varying luck.
The story starts at the farm of Alexander Dombrowski in Brownstown in January of 1922. According to this article, 4 men, including Homer Noel, Melvin Brown, Lucky Leo Pakizer and a forth man that we will get to. Dombrowski was likely a bootlegger and these gentleman showed up at his farm to simply partake in the prohibition pastime of stealing booze. Dombrowski wasn't having it and grabbed a knife. He slashed the hand of the fourth man and was allegedly shot by this fourth man and died in front of his wife and child.
Six months later a man named Leo Sauerman was arrested on unrelated charges. The police noticed a scar on his hand on the same hand that Mrs. Dombrowski witnessed during the murder. She also claimed to have heard someone say the name "Leo" during the ordeal. Multiple witnesses including Mrs. Dombrowski and her son identified Leo Sauerman as the fourth man involved the crime that day. By October of 1922, Sauerman was charged and convicted of murder. He was sentenced to life in prison. It sounds like an open and shut case, but we're not done yet. Sauerman claimed innocence as he was in Kalamazoo that day. His mother and sister petitioned for his innocence.
When Sauerman was sentenced, for reasons not explained and maybe from the unbearable weight of guilt, Homer Noel and Melvin Brown confessed to Detroit Sheriff C.J. Coffin that they were there the night Dombrowski was murdered. They explained that Sauerman was not the murderer and that it was a man named Henry Hill that ran with their gang. The sheriff interrogated May Francesco, who ran the boarding house where Noel and Hill had lived. She attested to knowing Henry Hill and witnessed him leave the night of the murder, return with a wound on his hand, and throw away a bloody glove. He threatened to kill her if she mentioned anything in the Sauerman case to the police.
Leo Pakizer was unlucky to fall out of a window. He was terribly lucky to survive. Leo was unlucky enough to be charged with a murder that he may or may not have committed. He was lucky enough to be exonerated of it. The waves of luck that he endured were high amplitude.
The only other information I could find on him was that he married Clara Veronica Myslisz in 1920 and died at the age of 68 in 1962. I like to imagine that the rest of his life was met with things like winning the lottery and promptly contracting polio and living in an iron lung.
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