Age:     41
Served: 1 yr
1943 to October 21, 1944

On October 18, 1944, Special Deputy Pressley, of 933 West Seventh Street, Cincinnati, was assigned to Valley Homes; an unincorporated subdivision of Cincinnati and now a part of Lincoln Heights.  He responded at 10:30 p.m. to a boisterous crowd of 25 people near 9866 Douglas Walk.  A man walked down the street toward Deputy Pressley.  The officer ordered him to quiet down and the man replied, “Come on out and stop me.”  As Deputy Pressley walked toward him, the man shot him in the abdomen with a .22 caliber rifle.  The assailant escaped with the rifle and Deputy Pressley was transported to General Hospital in Cincinnati.  There he died three days later on October 21, 1944.

The ensuing investigation found that the rifle had been pawned by Curless Ammons of 1133 Jackson Street, also in Valley Homes.  Ammons told police that Clarence Griffin, also known as John Dudley, came to his home on the night of the shooting and told him that he had just shot a police officer.  Griffin left the rifle outside Ammons’s home and Ammons pawned it.  Investigators determined that the rifle fired the bullet taken from Deputy Pressley’s abdomen. 

Five months later, on March 19, 1945, Gary, Indiana Police shot and killed a man during an attempted arrest.  The dead man was tentatively identified as Clarence Griffin.  A few days later, Griffin’s wife and mother and Special Deputy Sim Thompson traveled to Gary to identify Griffin.  An order was given for exhumation of the body and on April 3, 1945, his body was exhumed and identified and the Pressley homicide case was closed.

Elmore Pressley was a laborer until 1941 at which time he lost his first wife, Maggie, to Tuberculosis.  By the end of 1941 he was a Special Policeman with an unknown agency and remarried.  His new wife, a widow and minister, was Ellie Willie Lee.  During 1943, he was appointed as a Special Deputy. 
Special Deputy Pressley is buried without a marker in the North Section, Row 1, Grave 34 at the Union Baptist Cemetery.  Ellie never remarried, died in Drake Hospital on January 16, 1988 at the age of 76 and was buried in Vine Street Cemetery in the Mueller Heights Section, Lot 8, Grave 4.

The Greater Cincinnati Police Museum is looking for any relative of Elmore Pressley in order to garner permission to place a monument at his grave.  If you know anything about him at all, please contact the Museum Director at Director@GCPHS.com.