1939 Middletown Meat Market Burglary Turns Deadly

The intent was robbery. The result was murder.

Joseph G. Dripps, who owned and operated a meat market at 261 Ridge Road in Middletown, was closing up his store a little after 9:30 p.m. on Jan. 21, 1939, and preparing to head home.

Meanwhile, Ira Allen Weaver and Vincent Cots Jr. were parking their getaway car on Russell Street, a little east of the store. It was a dark night, and they hoped to make a clean exit after the robbery.

Weaver, a 35-year-old native of King’s Fountain, N.C., and Cots, 32, originally of Shelton, met as carnival workers during the previous summer with the Coleman Brothers Shows. Weaver was living with Cots and his wife Elizabeth in their small apartment at 188 Main St.

Something went terrible wrong with the plan. One of the men went to the back door of the market and asked to buy a pack of Camels, and Dripps let him in. As they moved toward the cigarette counter, the robber showed the gun and asked for money. Dripps hesitated, and a shot was fired. The gunman escaped with the day’s take from the meat market, and Dripps, mortally wounded, made his way to the home of his neighbor to the north, Walter Bailey. The police were called, but Dripps died that night.

Joseph Dripps and his wife Elizabeth lived in a gambrel-roofed Colonial Cape house at the northeast corner of Ridge and Randolph roads. They were married in 1923 when they were both in their late 30s. At the time of the murder, they had a son David who was almost 14.

A witness returning to his home on Front Street from his job at the Long Lane Farm walked past the car parked on Russell Street and saw a man sitting in the passenger seat. He noticed the “call hooks and wings” on the hubcaps. A few minutes later he heard a car start up, saw it speed past him with its lights out, and turn onto Front Street.

By Tuesday, the two murder suspects — Weaver and Cots — were in custody, and on the following day, the two confessed.

Less than eight weeks from the day of the murder, the men were tried, convicted and sentenced to die in the electric chair.

Middletown followed the trial with great curiosity. Vincent Cots had been in town for a few years and had worked for many local people. Many testified to his dependable character at the trial.

It came out at the trial that Weaver and Cots had committed at least two other burglaries in the preceding months. Money was tight, and rent was due. In previous robberies, they stole cigarettes and cigars and found local businesspeople to help sell them. In each instance, Weaver had committed the crimes, while Cots drove his car to and from the location.

On the night of the Dripps’ robbery, the two men planned originally to rob Fladd’s Market on Cross Street, today the Neon Deli. According to Weaver, Cots was planning to do the heist this time, but he chickened out. While Cots worked up his nerve, they drove over to Dripp’s market.

In the confessions a few days after the murder, Weaver and Cots both gave statements that identified Weaver as the robber and gunman. At the trial, however, Weaver testified that he only said that to protect Mrs. Cots. On the stand, he insisted that Cots was the gunman. Cots, who was 5 feet, 3 inches tall and of Hispanic descent, indeed, may have been the gunman. Before Dripps died, he told Mr. Bailey that the gunman was a short man of dark complexion.

Both convictions were reviewed by the state, and the execution, originally scheduled for August, was postponed. Weaver was denied another trial, and the men spent their last year of life at the Wethersfield state prison.

On April 30, 1940, 15 months after they robbed Joseph G. Dripps of $6 and killed him, Ira Weaver and Vincent Cots were electrocuted in Wethersfield at the state prison for their crimes.

Editor's note: Liz Warner wrote about the 1921 trial and hanging of Emil Schutte of Haddam, who was convicted of murdering the Ball family, for East Haddam-Haddam Patch earlier this week.

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