Pennsylvania Oddities

During the Great Depression, millions of Pennsylvanians found themselves facing an uncertain financial future, and many sought enterprising ways to keep the dark shadows of poverty at bay. Some risked jail time manufacturing moonshine, others traded labor for food and other necessities, and still others foraged for berries, bottles and scrap metal-- anything that could be sold, even if the reward...

A house on North Eleventh Street in Philadelphia was once the home of Jimmy Logue, who rose to notoriety as one of America's most infamous criminals, earning the nickname, "The King of Sneak-Thieves".  In this house Jimmy lived with his wife, Johanna, and their young son, Percy. But, in February of 1879, Johanna Logue vanished under mysterious circumstances. She had planned to go to New York by tr...

This special episode features two new Pennsylvania Oddities stories, plus Episode 1 of my new short-form true crime podcast, 15 Minutes of Infamy. Part I: The Psychiatrist's Fatal Folly During the early history of Rockview State Penitentiary in Centre County, the homes of prison officials were tended by the most trusted and deserving inmates, who served as domestic servants. But things changed in...

During the early 20th century the portion of Avoca to the east of Interstate 81, near the Wilkes-Barre Scranton International Airport, was a mining community known as Brown's Patch. Like most mining patches among the anthracite fields of Pennsylvania, Brown's Patch was home to many struggling, impoverished families. In the 1920s, one such family who called Brown's Patch home was the Ca...

In April of 1936, authorities initially believed that three-year-old Sonny Karmendi's death had been caused by a hit-and-run driver. But the truth soon brought to light one of the most shocking murders in the history of Blair County.

In Manheim Township, just north of the city of Lancaster, there flows a tiny stream which has its source near Roseville. This little brook, an unnamed tributary of Landis Run, is little more than a trickle, and although it flows for a distance of less than two miles from Roseville to Eden, there is a long and astonishing list of curious deaths associated with it-- a list that, to my knowledge, has...

On June 15, 1934, the body of a missing four-year-old girl, Leah Minerva Dilley, was found after nearly two weeks of searching, in a spot more than three miles from her home-- under extremely bizarre circumstances. Leah had died from cyanide poisoning resulting from a careless fumigator, before her body was transported to a field and burned in a bonfire, over which three unsuspecting children toas...

Around five o'clock on Saturday evening, March 7, 1953, a TV repairman was at work in his basement workshop, unaware that he was about to step into a nightmare more terrifying than any late-night horror flick that he or his customers had ever viewed on their television screen. When Paul Schultz went upstairs in his home in Nazareth, his wife, Claire, asked him to go out and look for their two...

Of all the missing persons cases in the history of the United States, few have made as indelible a mark as the 1938 disappearance of four-year-old Marjorie West. The mystery surrounding Marjorie's unexplained disappearance from a Mother's Day outing has been the subject of books, television shows and magazine articles. In fact, one British newspaper, The Guardian, has referred to the case...

In 1826, the citizens of Lebanon were horrified to learn that a murder had taken place in their peaceful, idyllic community. In every household throughout the county the crime was discussed, while parents and preachers alike used the murder and the subsequent execution of the killer as a teaching device in order to illustrate the perils of intoxication and the evils of liquor. This is the story of...

For most of its history, Mechanics Grove was a quiet, unassuming community amid the rolling farmlands of Lancaster County. But things changed in 1935, when authorities went searching for a missing Maryland woman and uncovered a "hospital of horror" inside a farmhouse owned by a disreputable, drug-addicted physician known as as Doc Zimmerly.

For most of his 63 years on earth, Hugh Smith was a respected resident of Liberty Valley. Hugh owned 380 acres of land in Perry County, and he earned a handsome living renting out his lands to sawmill operators. And for 28 of those years, the respectable Hugh Smith may have carried with him the belief that he had gotten away with the perfect murder-- of a young "half-witted" woman known...

During the Great Depression, there lived in Fayette County a mountain man named Iley Tate who ruled the hill country between Haydentown to the West Virginia line like a feudal lord. Tate, a father of 20, had amassed considerable wealth as a livestock trader, and, because of his influence and steel-cold demeanor, he had a number of local lawmen and politicians in his hip pocket. Like many powerful...

On April 7, 1930, two men entered a shallow cave near Shohola to escape a sudden thunderstorm-- and discovered the skeletal remains of a murder victim. The news of the mystery skeleton caught the attention of a probation officer from New York, who had been told a peculiar story a few years earlier about a mountain man who had lured a stranger to his death near Shohola. Though many pieces of the fo...

On a February evening in 1944, Dr. Louis Schulman, a prominent 42-year-old physician, was gunned down on the streets of Pittsburgh by a former patient. The killer was Martha Ashear, a Syrian immigrant who claimed that she had taken matters into her own hands after no one believed the shocking accusations she had made against Dr. Schulman. Was Martha telling the truth? Or did Pittsburgh's medic...

Known as "Philadelphia's First Suburb", the neighborhood of Northern Liberties existed as a unique and independent city until 1854, when an Act of Consolidation passed by the state legislature made it a part of the City of Brotherly Love. By the time of its consolidation, Northern Liberties had earned a reputation as one of the most infamous red-light districts in the country, with s...

In February of 1884, the rural village of Rawlinsville in Martic Township, Lancaster County, experienced the most noteworthy event in its long history-- the mysterious murder of hotelkeeper Barney Short, whose body was found sprawled across the road with a gaping wound in the skull. Evidence indicated that the killer, or killers, had crouched behind a roadside tree, waiting for Barney to pass by i...

Were it not for the famous Lizzie Borden murder trial taking place five hundred miles away in Fall River, Massachusetts, the story of the phantom train of Cambria County might have become well-known outside of Carrolltown. This tiny borough sits twenty miles west of Altoona, and, in 1892, became a stop on the newly-formed Cambria & Clearfied Railroad. The focal point of this rail line was a tu...

The village of Dalmatia in Northumberland County is situated along the Susquehanna River, on land once owned by William Dunbar, an early settler who purchased the property from Thomas McKee in 1773. One enduring mystery of Dalmatia is how this inland village came to be named after a coastal region of Croatia, as early records indicate that no one of Croatian descent has ever lived there. Another m...

First settled in the early 18th century, the quaint neighborhood of Shipoke is one of the most desirable in Harrisburg. However, for much of its history, Shipoke was regarded as a run-down, squalid place populated by Harrisburg's working poor. One of the more run down locales was Indian Alley, and it was on this street where a house once stood that was rumored to be haunted. In fact, the home...

On August 3, 1907, a peaceful summer morning in Blooming Grove turned to horror with the accidental discovery of 75-year-old John Newman's body partially hidden behind a stone wall. Though no blood was found on his clothes, it was clear that he had not died of natural causes when a gaping wound was discovered beneath his shirt. So killed the elderly Pike County farmer, and why?

In June of 1908, the body of David Shilling, a 16-year-old office boy, was found hanging from a printing press at the newspaper offices of the Chambersburg People's Register. While evidence seemed to suggest suicide, there are many peculiar facts surrounding the incident which has led to speculation that the young man may have been murdered in a botched robbery attempt, or worse-- murdered by...

In July of 1863, a bloody battle fought near a small Pennsylvania town made the name Gettysburg famous throughout the world. But just forty-five years later, in July of 1908, tragedy would once again befall soldiers on the hallowed fields of Gettysburg. This time, the casualties would not fall by Confederate cannonballs or Union bayonets-- but by the hands of Mother Nature.

Located in Clinton County, Cherry Run, a tributary of Fishing Creek, is situated in a rugged, narrow valley between the small rural communities of Tylersville and Lamar. Today, a small clearing exists where Cherry Run intersects Narrow Road. On this spot once stood the two-room log home of a 34-year-old farmer named Isaiah Colby, his wife, Nora, and their two young children. On August 8, 1887, Isa...

In March of 1932, a girl named Alice was born in Fayette County to Martha Harris, the unwed 27-year-old daughter of a prosperous farmer from Perryopolis. Years passed, but very little was seen of Alice. Neither Martha nor her father spoke of her, not even her brother mentioned her. It was almost as if the child had never existed. Despite the secrecy surrounding the child, word of Alice's existence...