Tag: Pennsylvania
Pottsville Hunter Rescued Alive After Terrifying Mine Shaft Fall
A pheasant hunt near Pottsville turned into a nightmare when 22-year-old Joseph Schrader stepped into an old mine shaft and plunged 400 feet into the…
Pennsylvania Woman Tied Up, Covered in Molasses and Feathers by Four Women
In the early 1900s, “whitecap” attacks were acts of vigilante intimidation, often carried out by groups who believed they had the right to punish or…
Man and Unknown Woman Drown in Fairmount Park
In March 1907, a quiet stretch of the Schuylkill River became the scene of a grim mystery. A park guard in Fairmount Park saw a…
Wilkes-Barre Mayor Says Jazz and Frankfurters Are Ruining America
In the roaring twenties, few cultural trends spread faster or stirred more controversy than jazz. To its fans, the new music was exciting and full…
Scranton Hearing Reveals Fight Over Child Labor in the Mines
In the hard coal fields of Pennsylvania, where whole towns lived by the whistle of the mines, the question of a miner’s wage was never…
Pittsburgh Police Probe Mystery of Headless Body
The discovery of a headless body in a bath house along Pittsburgh’s Monongahela River left detectives with a grim puzzle and almost nothing to follow. …
Pittsburgh Nurse Slain Near Abandoned Mansion
When Elsie Barthel left her Pittsburgh home for a short walk on a Saturday evening, there was no sign that anything was wrong. The 27-year-old…
Body Stolen from Erie Mausoleum
In February 1911, a disturbing report out of Erie, Pennsylvania, told of a crime that seemed almost too grotesque to believe: a wealthy family mausoleum…
Smoke Poured From Pittsburgh’s Western Penitentiary Windows
Shortly before one o’clock in the afternoon, emergency calls rang out from Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The first reports were alarming enough: prisoners had…
Headless Bodies Found in Pennsylvania’s Murder Marsh
They called it “murder marsh,” and by October of 1925, the name seemed horribly earned. In the swampy ground between Newcastle Junction and West Pittsburgh,…
