Date: February 13, 2025
Author: Timothy Freiss
Title: Green Bay Murder And Mayhem
Rated R for violence and sexual violence
Oh my gosh I learned so many fun facts about Green Bay, the city I was born and raised near! We have had a bit of a sordid past, as it turns out. Probably it didn’t help that Green Bay sprung up on and around a ginormous, desecrated, graveyard. But as with everything, the good of Green Bay was balanced out with the bad, which arose in the form of murder and mayhem.
Page 27 ‘Astor viewed the burial place as a waste of landscape and thought the graveyard would be the perfect place to build the first waterworks plant in Green Bay.’ Thus employing many workers in extremely undesirable conditions, and to create this waterworks plant he needed to dig up the graveyard to install the water mains for the plant. To make space for this creation Astor was known to have thrown tombstones into the Fox River. Apparently, water-worn and smooth stones in the shape of tomb stones have been known to wash up along the shoreline of the river from time to time. Also, the bodies that needed to be displaced from the earth to make room for this behemoth were removed and callously disposed of along with the regular dirt.
The citizens tried to make Astor stop but he claimed he wouldn’t until the Mayor himself told him he had to. The Mayor had moneys invested in the waterworks plant so was in no hurry to end the desecration. Ironically, Astor came to an early end in a watery grave of his own, having been aboard the Titanic.
One other super fun fact was in the 1974 draft Green Bay got their mitts on Randy Woodfield as a Green Bay Packer player. When it was his time to conclude his career with the Packers he packed up and traveled out west. His next claim to fame was to be of the serial killer variety, depositing his victims (believed to be about 44 women in a span of 8 months) up and down and along I-5.
Oh and Dillinger (the famous gangster?) was said to have quite possibly robbed a Green Bay bank. It’s unknown because the perpetrators were never caught. But there was a good many similarities with Dillinger’s style of stick-em-up.