By Pauline Masson
The late Bertha Gifford of Pacific, Missouri’s most prolific women serial killer, titilated area resident for decades after two young boys in her care died from arsenic poisoning and 15 others succomed while in her care. But compared to the guy who built the drag strip south of Pacific, Bertha was just a misguided nurse who mistakenly treated sick neighbors with medication she said she took herself.
St. Louis dentist Dr. Glenn Engelman was an admitted and prolific serial killer.
He had already committed one murder when he arrived in Pacific in 1962, a fast talking huckster who said he was going to build a half mile drag strip south of town that would attract the nation’s best stock car and drag racers and their souped up cars that could reach 200 miles per hour.
Engleman and his partner Eric Frey bought 88 acres across from the Nike Missile Base on hwy AP and started construction on the Pacific Drag Strip that opened in August 1963.
Like professor Harold Hill selling musical instruments to the gullible parents in the movie Music Man, Engleman, a cracker jack promoter attracted the National Hot Rod Association to sponsor the Pacific races and predicted to local reporters that the track would attract 1,000 to 1,200 spectators to the races. On opening day Sunday August 18, 1963 he outlived his own hype when 3,870 paid the $1.50 entry fee to see a match race between Tony Nancy the U.S. champion drag racer and Ron Pellegrini, another national champion driver. For added attraction he staged a grand air show complete with parachute jumpers and wing walkers.
Excitement was palpable. People lined up on each side of the track, right on the very edge. Those at the far end couldn’t see who was at the starting line and would step out on the track for a better look-see. There were rules. Drivers who had modified their cars with wheelie bars were warned to only pop the front wheel off pavement at the start line. Sure enough one driver waited until he was in front of the largest crowd to pop a wheelie and was immediately disqualified for grandstanding.
To add to the excitement the stopping area at the end of the half mile track was too short and in the first weeks several car ended up in the trees at the end. Engleman quickly reduced the length of the strip to a quarter mile and extended the stoppping area. It was a high time as Pacific came into its own in the fast moving drag strip era.
Then, six weeks into the new venture a terrible accident took the life of Engleman’s partner, Eric Frey.
On Sept. 26, 1963, Frey was found dead at the bottom of a well on the track property with severe head injuries and a large amount of dynamite. Some reported that they heard an explosion. At the time, the death was ruled accidental but by the end of Engleman’s trial in early 1980, the huckster confessed to murdering seven people, including Frey.
All his victims were people he knew and all were for money.
Frey was actually Engleman’ second victim. He shot James Bullock, the second husband of his ex-wife, Edna Ruth Ball in 1958. She collected Bullock’s life insurance and invested $20,000 in Engleman’s drag strip.
Five years later when he killed his partner, Frey’s wife collected $25,000 in death benefits and gave $16,000 of it to Engleman, to help build the drag strip.
Interestingly, there was no report of an explosion or of Frey’s death at the new drag strip in any of the local newspapers.
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For some background on the drag strip, I turned to the one person I knew who had an affinity for high performance cars, Steve Reed former American Family Insurance agent here. I always associated Steve with the 2007 red Corvette that he showed at several Pacific Car Shows. With a few clues from him, I was able to piece together this sketch of life at the short lived drag strip and Engleman.
Steve’s dad Jake Reed worked as the maintenance man at the Nike Base, the only civilian on the base. The family moved to Pacific in 1959 and by 1965, at age 22, Steve headed to the Drag Strip to run his 1960 Pontiac down the quarter mile track, which earned him a trophy.
He remembered the drag strip as a lively place. He went there to watch Sid Morrell race his 1966 Chevelle, which Sid and his partner named “Half Fast.” And there was a guy who raced a wild Oldsmobile Toronado that was engineered with two 454 motors.
“The funniest thing about that drag strip being there,” Reed said, “The Nike Missile Base was supposed to be a big secret. When they were building it and people were trucking parts out from St. Louis, they routed them on all the back roads so nobody would know they were building a missile base there. Then this guy comes along and puts drag strip right across from it.”
Wth Reed’s clues, I found former Utah librarian and historian Mel Bashore, who has researched all the drag strips in the U.S. in the early days of local drag strips and stock car race tracks and publishes a web page, dragstriplist.com.
Bashore found that the Pacific Drag Strip was one of 34 in Missouri in 1963. He did a short write up on every drag strip. He said the Pacific strip operated until 1967 but I was unable to confirm that. A Secretary of State business search on the drag strip reported that a lien of $32,000 had been issued against the strip in 1964 for unpaid construction cost. The final sentence in Bashore’s write up on the Pacific Drag Strip mentioned that Engleman was a convicted serial killer.
That led me to a Fox News report that said the drag strip went bankrupt and Engleman decided to go back to work in dentistry. But it wasn’t long until he was killing again.
In 1976. Engleman shot Peter J. Halm in Pacific. Halm’s wife, Carmen, a friend of Engleman’s from a young age, collected $75,000 of Halm’s life insurance and gave $10,000 to Engleman.
A year later, Engleman had an affair with Barbara Boyle, wife of Ron Gusewelle. He murdered Arthur and Vernita Gusewell, Ron’s parents, and killed Ron 17 months later. Ron’s widow collected $190,000.
The next victim Sophie Marie Berrera, who died in a car bombing in Jan 1980, had done some work for Engleman in her dental lab. She made the mistake of threatening to take him to court over the $14,500 that he owed her.
Engleman’s braggadocio habits would eventually be his undoing.
When Barrera’s son, Frederick Barrera, accused Engleman of murdering his mother Police started connecting Engleman to the murders that seemed to surround him. Engleman’s third wife, Ruth Jolly, came forward and confessed to the police.
She said that Engleman would often brag about the murders and how easy it was to get away with it and she was afraid that he might make plans to get rid of her as well. With her help, Police captured Engleman on tape offering the details of all the murders.
In a series of trials Engleman was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life. He died at the age of 71 in 1999 at the Jefferson City Correctional Center.
The former drags strip was idle for decades and almost forgotten. Then a series of race car enthusiasts put up social media sites that recalled the excitement of the former drag strip.
Now Evergreen Lakes Subdivision occupies the site but several web pages wait for anyone with memories of the old drag strip to provide more stories or photos.
One – www.stlracing.com had posts of people who had raced at the Pacific Drag Strip.
“The one day I remember was when, I think it was, the Arfons bros ran a jet dragster there and every hot dog wrapper in the county was blown up the embankment behind the starting line, and over the fence, into the Nike missile site,” a member signed only as Rich, posted. “After the joint closed we used to go out there for impromptu grudge racing.”
“We were guilty of a few of those impromptu grudge races too,” a member who signed as Partsman posted. “That place was bare bones but it was fun and close to home. Those were the days.”
Fireball, a Well known member recalled the modified cars that fed the racing world.
“I actually won my trophy class in a 57 Pontiac there with a 347 two barrel against a tri power 58 Pontiac with I guess a 389.” He said. “Lke a dummy I gave my trophy to some girl that went to Roosevelt. Sure wish I had kept it.”
Mel Bashore’s dragstriplist is a comprehesive encyclopedia of the golden age of drag strips.
A site called DigitalDragStrip has posted 1966 radio spots that advertised the Pacific Drag Strip
Halm’s parents lived 3 houses from me in Kirkwood. I remember when he was killed in Pacific and some of the details told to me by the parents.
That dragstrip is still there and known as Central Avenue. The entrance is on Wayside Drive right across from Nike School. It turns right and there you are, right on Central. It is oriented roughly North-South.
The Nike Base was not a secret at all. In fact, a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article from February 22, 1959 is titled, “Construction Work at Nike Site near Pacific” and has photos. That’s not the only article, there are dozens over the years. In an article “Pacific Nike Installation will look like this”, published in the Washington Citizen on May 12, 1958, you can see what it will look like.
The original owners of the land it sits on had a federal judge take it from them in June of 1958 and those details were published in the St. Louis Globe Democrat on June 14, 1958 in an article titled, “Nike Base takes Pacific, Mo., Land” and includes the text, “The area has been designated site for one of four Nike installations to protect the St. Louis area in case of an air invasion”. So the base was not at all a secret by the time Engelman arrived in 1962.
All these years I thought that area was a landing strip for Nike Base. I enjoyed the story explaining what it actually was.
I was there when Frey was killed. My father was an investment guy in that race track. My uncle Nick, my father, James Fuhrmann, and Glenn Engleman Glenn Engleman was my dentist when I was a kid and he killed my uncle Peter Holm, who is married to my aunt Carmen Carmen Miranda.