The Holiday Hit-And-Run of Kevin Showalter

On Christmas Eve 1973, 20-year-old Kevin Showalter pulled over to fix a flat tire, only to be struck by a car in a tragic hit-and-run that remains an unsolved mystery decades later.

(As heard in the Weird Darkness podcast episode, ‘Twas The Mystery Before Christmas)

Kevin Showalter was a young man driving home to New London, Connecticut on Christmas Eve in 1973 after visiting his relatives. It was an uneventful night and no one could have predicted a tragic end. Kevin pulled over to the side of the road to fix the flat tire on his car. This simple action would be his last.

Kevin was busy changing the tire and soon a car approached him from behind. The driver hit Kevin and left the scene, leaving the 20-year-old severely injured on the pavement. By the time help got there, Kevin had died. Hit by someone who never stopped to help or to call for help.

The police began investigating immediately, but they had few leads. There was little physical evidence at the scene, and no witnesses stepped forward to say what they had seen. As the townsfolk speculated, some began to wonder if someone was trying to hide the truth.

Kevin’s mother, Lorraine Showalter, refused to allow her son’s death to be lost to memory. She urged the police to treat the case seriously, and continued looking for answers about who had murdered her son. She didn’t back down, even when the investigation appeared to lead nowhere.

Two years after Kevin’s death, police received an interesting tip. An anonymous tipster told them, of all people, that Charles C. O’Neill, the former mayor of New London, could have been the driver who hit Kevin. This was big news because O’Neill was a big figure around town. The police looked into O’Neill’s whereabouts on the night Kevin died but did not find enough evidence to charge him with the crime.

When it seemed like the case might never be solved, something unexpected occurred. One man stepped forward and said that he was the one who had hit Kevin. But when police investigated his account, they learned he was not truthful. His admission only further complicated the case.

The case went unsolved for almost a decade. Lorraine Showalter began to suspect that influential people in town were keeping the truth from coming out. Then came a glimmer of hope in 1984 — police announced they would revisit the investigation. They reexamined all the evidence and interviewed witnesses one more time. They also re-examined whether the former mayor O’Neill had been involved. But despite this new investigation, the mystery remained unsolved.

But eventually, people in New London began to lose interest in the case. But Kevin’s family always remembered. They kept asking the questions: Was Kevin’s death a true accident? Or did someone strike him on purpose? Was someone covering up what really happened?

People speculated that the driver could have been under the influence of drink or drugs that night. Others speculated whether someone had motive to harm Kevin. But after so many years, no one could say for certain what had unfolded.

Today his case is still unsolved. We still don’t know who was behind the wheel of the car that struck him that Christmas Eve, even with a dozen investigations and leads over the years. Kevin’s family has never given up searching for answers.

(Cover photo: news.com.au; Source list: https://weirddarkness.com/christmasmysteries/)