When the trials that would condemn the men finally came, it was specifically for the murder of Gretchen Kintzler, not John. The judge in the case noted, against the objection of Jonathan Moyer’s counsel, that this was a “new and fresh indictment.” Emanuel Ettinger was found guilty of murder in September 1880, while Israel Erb and Jonathan Moyer were convicted of murder three months later. At Jonathan Moyer’s trial, his lawyer tried to have the case thrown out on a technicality—Moyer had been held in jail for two consecutive terms of the court of oyer and terminer, in violation of Moyer’s habeas corpus rights under Pennsylavania’s “two term rule.” The judge in the case denied the motion, and the proceedings into the “unhappy and cruel death of old Mrs. Kinztler” began.
In November 1881, Detective W.Y. Lyon of Reading captured Uriah Moyer near Schoolcraft, Michigan. Lyon took Moyer by train back to Snyder County to stand trial. In Uriah Moyer’s December 1881 trial, the Mifflin County man Daniel Smith testified that when he had bought a cow from John Kintzler several years before, the old man went under his bed to produce change from a box filled with money.
When his death sentence was read aloud in court, Uriah Moyer maintained his innocence. “Mary Hartley lied the whole time,” Moyer declared, “And Lyons lied as to what he said. He said that I had killed old Mrs. Kintzler. It is a lie.” As reported by the Middleburgh Post, the judge had the final say:
You doubtless thought when you applied the torch of the incendiary to the Kintzler dwelling that the consuming fire would conceal your iniquity. You believed that all traces of your bloody transgression would be hidden amid the black and smoking ruins of the Kintzler habitation. Deluded man; your iniquity has been discovered. Your guilt has found you out. For a season you baffled all efforts to obtain a conviction, and it seemed that you would escape the penalty of your offense. But avenging justice with sleepless vigilance kept right on your track, and at the moment least suspected by yourself, you were confronted with the evidence of your guilt.