I found this article very interesting. I was doing a web search of my name and this article came up. I'm Walter Platz, born thirty years after the murder. When I was in college in Kirkisville, Missouri. I worked at a gas station for a man named Bob Barrackman. The station was Barrackman's Service. No one was ever murdered there though. I never knew any Platzes migrated west of Missouri until I moved to Utah in 1980. My Grandfather was also named Walter Platz, but not the one in Howard. Thought you might find the coincidences interesting.
Walter Platz
Ogden, Utah
Walter Platz
Ogden, Utah