Built in 1891, Preston Castle was a school for wards of the state until it was closed in the late 1960s. Anna Corbin's killing in 1950 was one of two employee murders that took place there. The other, teacher James Wieden, happened in 1965. Photo by: Courtesy to the Ledger Dispatch

On a clear night you can see it looming over the town - a red mammoth, a long wave of bricks and shadows. It stands abandoned on a hill, its grounds lifeless, its hallways empty, its windows like dozens of eyes under a tower rising in the moonlight.

Ione's castle is a nocturnal vision, capable of inspiring fear and awe in the minds of many who cross it. Yet beyond what our imaginations can project lurking in its dark corridors, few people today know the real nightmare that unfolded in its sleepy husk nearly six decades ago - a horrific unsolved murder that's left some wondering if more than troubled memories haunt the crumbling recesses of Preston Castle.

It was Thursday, Feb. 23, 1950, and Preston School of Industry's superintendent Robert B. Chandler was settling down for an afternoon meeting with his staff. Suddenly the door burst open. A young ward rushed in, white-faced and terrified. Moments later the entire school was on lockdown as Chandler and his employees raced to the castle's basement. Inside the narrow dimensions of what was then called "the mattress room," they confronted a grisly sight - one that literally put their hearts on hold.

The victim was 52-year-old Anna Corbin, the head housekeeper at Preston. By all accounts she was an attractive woman with a tender way about her. Graceful, even matronly, she had countless friends in the Ione community. Her easy manner and nurturing smile were said to have caused many of the "wayward boys" at Preston to think of her as an adoptive mother.

It's hard now to imagine what flashed through the minds of Chandler and his staff as they creaked open the dusty storeroom and found Corbin's ravaged body lying in a pool of blood. A chord of hemp twine had been roped around her neck, and she'd been beaten in such a manic fervor that they could scarcely tell who she was.

Within hours the castle was under siege by local law enforcement and the State Criminal Investigation Division of Sacramento. All 657 wards of the school were questioned late into the night.

After a week of grueling inquiry, Amador County Sheriff George W. Lucot (grandfather of current Amador Sheriff Martin Ryan) and Amador County District Attorney, Gard Chisholm, thought they had their man. His name was Eugene Monroe. A 19-year-old who'd been convicted of burglary in Southern California, Monroe had been spotted by two school employees near Corbin's office around the time of the murder. Other wards had seen him burning his cloths in an incinerator after the slaying. One ward said Monroe confessed, and the suspect was found to be in possession of a belt smeared with blood.

In 2004, the woman who was Chandler's secretary in 1950, Goula Wait, recalled in a conversation with historian Elaine Zorbas hearing Monroe's interrogation through the wall of her office. "The boy's voice would rise and rise and rise and rise," Wait said, her mind slipping back 54 years to remember the sound. "He was on the edge."

Wait passed away in 2006, but her recorded testimony still survives - a faint view of Lucot and Chisholm's final stroke for check mate.

Or was it?

Over the next year Monroe would be tried three separate times for the murder of Corbin. The first two trials were both hung juries. Ione was stunned. Residents threatened to kill one of the jurors who'd voted to free Monroe.

On Oct. 20, 1950, Monroe's third trial ended in his full acquittal.

So how did Monroe escape conviction? To start with, superintendent Chandler and the state investigators apparently never believed he was the murderer. Some witnesses contradicted the prosecution's theory about where he was during the killing. The blood on his belt couldn't be positively linked to Corbin. The youth ward who claimed he confessed was proven to be a liar on the witness stand. Lastly, Monroe's attorney argued that Corbin's body was so harmed by blunt force that it was impossible the boy could have done it with only his hands.

Race may also have been a factor. Monroe was black - and the county's archives contain two mysterious handwritten letters from Sacramento, both addressed to Chandler, which suggest a fear that Monroe was automatically made the prime suspect because of the color of his skin.

But what those letter writers probably didn't know - and what all three juries never heard - was that in 1949, before arriving at Preston, Monroe was the suspect in the murder of a 17-year-old girl in Southern California, the details of the crime matching those of Corbin's almost exactly.

The day after his acquittal, the California Youth Authority decided to parole Monroe from Preston School of Industry. He was a free man.

One year later Monroe was arrested for, and openly confessed to, the rape and murder of a pregnant woman in Tulsa. He was sentenced to life in prison, plus an extra 40 years for the separate armed robbery of another woman.

In 1969, Preston Castle was closed and completely abandoned. Over the next 35 years, virtually no one entered its deteriorating hallways. Many people in Ione moved away. Many died. Corbin's story faded into rural legend and then was forgotten. Even the Preston Castle Foundation knew only a vague skeleton of the tale.

In the late 1990s a group of Ione teenagers began sneaking into the castle in order to "party" away from the prying eyes of the town; that is, until something strange happened one night. Today, it's hard to get a straight answer about what exactly the teens thought they'd witnessed inside, but it's clear some never viewed the building the same way again. It whispered that a strange and disturbing spectacle manifested itself within the silent walls.

In 2006, Mule Creek Prison guard Devon Vasque and his wife Michelle were on a daytime tour of the castle hosted by the Preston Castle Foundation when the guide led their group into the basement. As the guide waited for others to catch up, Michelle wandered into the executive kitchen. She began walking toward a odd-looking door in the corner. She was suddenly overwhelmed by a terrible feeling.

"I couldn't take a step further," Michelle said. "There was just something about the door that felt very, very wrong." In a joking voice the young mother added, "I'm not one of 'those people' who get feelings - but in this case I got a cold, rushing sensation that gave me the chills. I didn't know why, but I knew I couldn't take another step toward that door."

Michelle was so troubled that she told the tour guide. The guide shot her a look. There was absolutely nothing posted about the history of the basement. Only a handful of people alive had knowledge of what had gone on in the castle over the years and the guide had not mentioned any specific stories on the tour. "A long time ago a woman was murdered," the guide said hesitantly, "a cook, I think." He paused. "That door opens to the tiny storeroom where they found her body."