By Sarah Fertsch
Staff Writer
Travel back in time to the Jersey Shore in 1938. Candy stripes, carnival acts and unique thrills are on every corner. There’s a waft of salty sea mist and chocolatey fudge in the air. A seagull cackles in the distance.
Wildwood and the nation were in the midst of the Great Depression. Tourism had taken a big hit so developers needed something special to entice everyday folks to spend their hard-earned dollars at the shore.
Atlantic City, Ocean City and Wildwood continued to make money because families in the Philadelphia region opted for one-day beach and boardwalk trips, not unlike today.
Steel Pier wowed crowds with diving horses, a diving bell and freak shows, so Wildwood’s boardwalk needed something big and bold to keep pace. That’s how the Wildwood Motordrome Wall of Death came into existence.
The Wall of Death, with its cryptic name, was a wooden, bowl-shaped enclosure in which speedsters whizzed around on motorcycles and race cars. The main attraction was a lion riding in a sidecar.
Tuffy, a 300-pound male African lion, was owned by Joseph Dobish, a sideshow concessionaire. His wife, Irene, drove the race car at a dangerously fast speed around and around the enclosure, with Tuffy by her side.
Like most animal performers of that time, Tuffy was treated poorly. When he wasn’t riding shotgun around the Wall of Death, Tuffy was kept in a metal dog crate and ate very little. During the off-season, between Labor Day and Easter, the lion remained in the cage all day, every day.
On Oct. 5, 1938, when Dobish opened the cage to feed Tuffy at 5:30 p.m., the lion escaped. Dobish did not notify the police until an hour later. It proved to be a fatal mistake.
It was around 7:30 p.m. when Japanese immigrant Thomas Saito left work. He entered his vehicle with 9-year-old Masami Oishi, his boss’s son, intending to drop him off at home because his father went fishing.
They were out of the car about 150 feet from the boardwalk when they saw a massive lion bound toward them. Tuffy gave a terrific roar and lunged at the fourth-grader. Saito pushed the boy into the car.
The child witnessed Saito being torn limb from limb as Tuffy mauled the man. Oishi screamed in terror as the lion dragged Saito by the neck under the boardwalk.
Police ran to the scene of the attack and formed task forces to catch and kill Tuffy. Even the Boy Scouts and the volunteer fire department helped search for the murderous monster.
“Women shuttered their windows, children huddled in their homes and men ventured into the streets, armed with guns and flashlights to warn them of the approach of the huge beast,” wrote The Wildwood Tribune-Journal.
Officers ventured under the boardwalk to recover Saito’s body, following the trail of blood. His clothes had been shredded and his neck was broken. Large chunks of flesh had been ripped off his corpse.
Like a horror movie, the team heard some careful steps in the sand. A figure emerged from the shadows cast by the planks of the boardwalk. They heard a growl. Ptl. Millard Campbell fired into the void and wounded Tuffy, who ran off again.
According to Weird NJ Magazine, officer John Gares was patrolling a fishing pier off the boardwalk when he spotted the lion, crouching behind a wire fence, stalking the policeman.
“It was the lion,” Gares later told reporters (as described in Weird NJ). “He was closing on me.”
Tuffy was just a few feet from Gares, waiting to pounce. There was a terrific roar, then the lion launched himself through the darkness.
As Tuffy leaped through the air toward Gares, the officer shot the lion between the eyes, taking down the cat.
Gares became a local hero and did multiple interviews with regional and national radio stations and newspapers. Three different women proposed to him.
Dobish, Tuffy’s owner, was charged with involuntary manslaughter and held on $3,000 bail. The grand jury asked the court to enact a law to ban dangerous animal acts on the boardwalk. One year later, a ban was enacted.
The Wall of Death continued to wow crowds for decades, slightly less entertaining without Tuffy riding in the sidecar.
It’s rumored that Tuffy’s head was stuffed and hung in one of the Wildwood bars, kept on display for several years, with a killer look in his eyes and a bullet in his forehead.
One Response
Such a cool story from the past. Thanks for the interesting read.