| Mary Wellington | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Vital statistics | |
| Name | Mary Wellington |
| Profession | High school student Pianist |
| Gender | Female |
| Notability | First rape and murder victim of Phillip Stroh |
| Played by | Kodi Saint Angelo |
| First appearance | “By Any Means, Part 2” |
Mary Wellington is a 16-year old girl from Chagrin Falls, Ohio and the first rape and murder victim of serial killer Phillip Stroh.
History[]
Mary was a resident of Chagrin Falls, Ohio and a pianist who did recitals by the time she reached high school. She also played at church during evening services on youth Sundays. On September 23, 1985, Mary's father recorded a video of her practicing for a coming recital to Mary's annoyance.
While Phillip Stroh lived in Chagrin Falls with his mother, step-father and step-sister in 1985, the sixteen year old Mary lived less than two miles from him and went to the same school. However, they were not friends and never talked to one another in front of anyone.
In late 1985, Mary was ambushed by the sixteen-year old Stroh on the way home from school and raped before Stroh murdered her. Stroh would later claim to his mother Gwendolyn that he walked Mary home when her mother didn't pick her up from school. Stroh would go on to state that Mary called him names and hit him several times, resulting in Stroh killing her in self-defense. However, Gwendolyn did not believe her son and instead believed that Stroh picked her out as a victim perfectly due to their lack of connection. After being shown Mary's body, Gwendolyn knew that her son was lying for sure and that Mary likely didn't do anything to upset Stroh except "probably scream." Gwendolyn also came to believe that Mary was chosen very carefully by her son since they had nothing connecting them to draw suspicion upon himself.
Rather than turn her son in, Gwendolyn decided that "the damage was already done" since Mary was dead and chose to help her son cover up the murder rather than report it and ruin his life. Knowing that her husband's company was about to pour the foundation of a house ten miles away, Gwendolyn and her son took Mary's body and buried it where the house's foundation would be laid.
Mary was reported missing shortly afterward, but her body was never found as the house went up on the location where her body was buried. Four years after Mary's disappearance, her family gave up on finding her, but the news played the video Mary's father made of her practicing every year until 1992 in hopes that she could be found. That same year, the house Mary was buried under suffered a terrible fire and Gwendolyn feared that Mary would be found. However, the fire never resulted in Mary's body being discovered and the owners had the house rebuilt.
The only person that ever suspected Phillip Stroh of being involved in Mary's disappearance was his step-father Jim Bechtel, but Stroh was able to lie convincingly. The incident caused Gwendolyn to send her son to an all-boys boarding school in an attempt to stop him from harming anyone else.
In 2017, following the return of Phillip Stroh, now a serial killer, to LA, the LAPD tracked down Gwendolyn Stroh under a new identity. The first thing Gwendolyn suspected was that they were there about Mary Wellington. The LAPD learned of Mary's unsolved disappearance and got her rather thin missing person's file from the Chagrin Falls Police Department. Given the timing, the detectives of the Major Crimes Division came to the realization that Mary was likely Stroh's first victim. With the help of Doctor Joe Bowman, the LAPD got the story of the night of Mary's murder from Gwendolyn Stroh.
After getting Gwendolyn's story, Detective Julio Sanchez was able to identify a house that matched Gwendolyn's description of where Mary had been buried. Julio contacted Chagrin Falls PD to search the location for Mary. Using ground-penetrating radar, the police located what they believed to be Mary's body and began digging up the house's foundation to recover Mary if it was indeed her that they had found. The Chagrin Falls PD recovered Mary's body from under the house and returned her remains to Mary's family.
After being told about Mary's rape and murder, Rusty Beck realized that one of Stroh's new victims, Elizabeth Dunn, was in fact Mary's sister. Rusty called Mary's mother Alice who expressed her thanks for the LAPD helping to recover her daughter's body after so many years. Rusty learned from Alice that even after the rest of Mary's family stopped searching for her, Elizabeth never did until she was paid off by Gwendolyn Stroh. Thanks to this information, the LAPD were able to identify Stroh's recent victims as people that were paid off by Gwendolyn to cover up her son's crimes.
Trivia[]
- Though Mary was the first rape and murder victim of Phillip Stroh, she was not the first victim that he had harmed. The LAPD learned that in 1981, four years before Mary's rape and murder, Stroh splashed his sixth-grade science teacher Gordon Ducrest with sulfuric acid, burning him.