John and Gretchen Kintzler lived in a cabin about one mile north of Troxelville. John was a “large, tall man” and Margaret was a “small woman,” according to court testimony by Troxelville resident Sallie Bingaman. John was born in Germany, and it seems that Gretchen was, too, although the 1860 census indicates that she was born in Pennsylvania.
They moved to the house above Troxelville at some point between 1857 and 1859, according to the trial testimony of Marks Hufnagle. The couple lived the kind of austere life that was typical of rural Pennsylvanians in the mid-nineteenth century. The 1860 census listed John as a clock-maker. In 1870, John was listed as a farmer, and Gretchen “kept house.” (Actually, the 1870 census lists them as John and Barbara Kinsley.) In the aftermath of their murders, newspapers reported that they earned money as fortune tellers. It was known by many around town that the “old Germans” had accrued money. In the days after their deaths, the Freeburg Courier reported that the Kintzlers were worth about $10,000 and “always kept a large amount of money in their house.” Whether there was any firm basis to this claim is difficult to tell.
By many accounts, John Kintzler was not a pleasant man. The Snyder County lawyer William Miller described him in 1917 as “muscular, morose and generally feared and hated by his neighbors for his prowess and ill-tempered disposition.” He did not like visitors as a rule, but the couple interacted with a few local residents on a regular basis. They were homebodies; Mary Lepley, a neighbor to the north, noted that it was rare for both of the Kintzlers to be gone from the house at the same time.
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, when summarizing the case on appeal, wrote this about the couple:
John Kintzler and Gretchen, his wife, were German people, who owned and lived in a one-and-a-half-story log house and a few acres of mountain land in a wild and secluded location in Adams townships, Snyder County, Pennsylvania. They lived almost entirely to themselves, made no friends, and repelled social intercourse. They guarded their premises, which they scarcely ever left, by watch-dogs and firearms. They gained the reputation of possessing and hoarding money, which they kept in a box buried in the ground under where the bed stood, covered by a trap-door in the floor.
On Saturday, December 8, 1877, the Kintzlers were found dead in their cabin in the early morning as a result of what seemed to be a tragic house fire. Neighbors awoke to find a fire raging at the cabin.
After an investigation that morning, it was confirmed to be murder.