The year 1917 in Battle Creek, Michigan was a time of great change. President Wilson had signed a declaration of War passed by Congress in April, and a military base which would become Camp Custer was under construction west of the city by June. Thousand of new people were in town, and arriving on trains, and from August to September, arrests by the police had increased by 900%.
It was in late September of 1917 when one of the most brutal murders of an Italian immigrant named Guiseppi Aiello, who was known locally as Joseph Ellen, occurred on the southern end of town. The coroner's inquiry would later declare it to be an assassination, and the police believed at one point that it may have been terrorists who committed the crime. The murder was never solved.
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