Chapter 8 – Can You Get Away With Murder in Lebanon County?
August 1959 – June 12, 1963
I remember my mother often saying that you could get away with murder in Lebanon County—and she didn’t just mean that figuratively. She’d trot that out whenever there was a murder trial in the county.
I confess that other than the Carrie Layser slaying, I didn’t recall the other murder trials that had taken place in the preceding years, so I decided to look them up.
In December 1960 LeRoy F. Kiscadden went on trial for killing Alvin W. Good, the father of three children, with three shots from a shotgun while Alvin was sitting in his car in front of of the Kiscadden home. Alvin and LeRoy’s wife Nona had been having an affair, and earlier that day Nona told LeRoy that she was going to meet Alvin that evening, whereupon LeRoy went out and bought a single barreled 16 gauge shotgun.
So we’ve got motive, means, and opportunity. Should be a slam dunk for a first degree premeditated murder conviction, right?
On December 14 the jury returned a verdict of voluntary manslaughter! On December 30 Judge G. Thomas Gates sentenced him to two to four years in the county jail!
Say what?!
I thought it was only in Texas that porking your spouse was justification for murder. Or perhaps the difference is that in Texas you also get a medal.
Moving on.
This next one is almost too sad to even report. In December 1959 Pearle M. Smith strangled her newborn son to death by knotting a white shoe lace around his neck. It became known as the shoe lace murder.
On June 8, 1961, Smith was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to the Wernersville State Hospital.
On August 9, 1961, Shelva Jean Werdt gunned down Lorraine Snyder who was having an affair with Shelva’s husband Earl.
In other words, the same situation as the first murder case above, just the sexes have been reversed. Another case of first degree premeditated murder.
This time though the jury was even kinder. They found her not guilty!
By the way, notice who her defense attorney was. Alvin B. Lewis Jr., who would shortly become the District Attorney for Lebanon County. I’ve had occasion to mention him previously when an Elco teacher was charged with assault and battery.
In October 1961 Arthur Linthurst shot and killed Charles Miller who was having an affair with Linthurst’s estranged wife. He also wounded Miller’s step-daughter, and fled the scene, but he was eventually caught.
Perhaps it was because he fled the scene, or maybe because he wounded the step-daughter, but he was found guilty of murder. In the second degree.
Meaning there was no premeditation.
Yeah, right.
Here’s another sad one. In August 1959 Dolores June Zipp strangled her five month old daughter Melody Ann to death.
On September 26, 1962, a jury found her not guilty by reason of insanity and she was sent back to Wernersville State Hospital where she had been committed since the murder.
And finally we come to Violet Miller Keller, perhaps the worst of the cases that I’ve found. But you can decide.
On March 26, 1963, Violet Miller Keller confessed to two weeks previously taking her newborn child, named Maryse Annette Keller, who had been crying, and putting her head face down in the bathroom commode. When she realized the child was dead, she wrapped it in towels and put it in a closet.
Her husband, Elton, from whom she was estranged, was in the Army and stationed in Virginia. Present at the time of the killing was her live-in boyfriend Roy Schaeffer who was reportedly asleep at the time. He passed a lie detector test and was not charged.
Her boyfriend was the first witness called at her trial, and he testified that he was in love with her and if she were free, he would marry her. Although he had been staying with her for the better part of a year, he was unaware that she was pregnant. He didn’t even realize she had given birth.
It was only after she went to the hospital two weeks after giving birth and was suffering from hemorrhaging, which was the result of the birth, that the authorities were alerted and she ended up confessing. The body of her dead baby was found wrapped up in the closet.
But the problem arose at the trial when the medical experts couldn’t declare beyond a reasonable doubt that the child, whose dead body had been stowed away in a closet for two weeks, had been born alive.
At that point Judge Gates had no alternative but to direct the jury to return a verdict of not guilty.
Even though Violet Miller Keller had confessed to sticking the child’s head in the commode! Even though in her confession she said the baby had been crying. Stillborn babies don’t cry.
So—could you get away with murder in Lebanon County back in the 60s?
What do you think?
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