“The indications are that the next sheriff will have an interesting but painful job to perform—the hanging of four men!”
When the editors of the Times of New Bloomfield, PA, predicted in August 1878 that Snyder County law enforcement would have an “interesting but painful” time in the upcoming years, they couldn’t have known how true their prediction was.
It had been eight months since a grisly double murder had occurred in an isolated cabin amid the undulating farmland and mountain ridges of western Snyder County. The investigation into the crime had taken several twists already…and several more lay ahead. But right then, in the late summer of 1878, the writers in New Bloomfield, almost thirty miles away from the murder scene, could write with some certainty that the “Snyder County Tragedy” would end soon in unqualified justice. Such a definitive ending was not to be.
Let’s take a closer look at the events surrounding the murders, the investigation, the trials, and the media sensation that rocked Snyder County in the 1870s and 1880s…