The Mysterious Suicide of a Penn State Professor

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In the summer of 1947 a well-liked zoology professor from Penn State University went missing. Despite a massive month-long search involving hundreds of concerned students, law enforcement officials and State College residents, the fate of the vanishing professor remained a mystery... until his body was found hanging from a tree less than four miles from campus, in a place that had been searched thoroughly.

On Tuesday, June 2, a feeling of anxiety permeated the campus as students prepared for final examinations. This feeling only intensified later that afternoon, when Dr. Vernon Haber failed to show up and give his zoology class its final exam. Murmurs spread through the study hall; Had Dr. Haber fallen ill? Had there been some kind of accident? Had the exams been cancelled at the last minute? This was completely out of character for Dr. Haber, who had been a member of the Penn State faculty for twenty-four years.

The last anyone had seen of Dr. Haber, the 59-year-old associate professor was on his way to lunch. He would never return. A neighbor, an insurance salesman by the name of C.S. Rockey, reported seeing the professor shortly before noon in the vicinity of the college dairy barns, which appears to be his last documented movement. A few hours earlier he was seen shopping alone downtown by the wife of a colleague. He had left his home at 8 o'clock that morning and went straight to his office at Frear Laboratory to work on an entomological paper. He left the laboratory about thirty minutes later.

According to his wife, Julia, the professor often liked to spend his free time hiking in the mountains and exploring the woods, studying the insects and birds. Some wondered if this could be just a case of an "absent-minded professor" who became fascinated by something he encountered in the outdoors and lost track of time. This could not have possibly been the case, however. When last seen, Dr. Haber was wearing a plain gray suit, blue striped shirt and brown shoes. He carried no money, and his car remained parked on campus just where he had left it.



A Massive Search Effort


As it grew late into the afternoon with no signs of the professor, the anxiety on campus grew into alarm. A volunteer search party was formed and hundreds of college students combed the surrounding woods and farmlands. By nightfall firemen and Boy Scouts armed with flashlights headed to the "barrens"-- a rocky and rugged two-mile stretch of the Nittany Mountains. The State Police and local law enforcement focused their search on the borough of State College, hoping to glean a lead.

The following day, three airplanes and bloodhounds from nearby Rockview Penitentiary joined the search. In spite of the urgency and panic, there was a pervading sense of optimism on campus that the beloved professor would be located safe and sound. After 48 hours of constant searching, that sense of optimism began to wane.

By the end of the week Haber's brothers had arrived in State College from their home state of Indiana to join Chief of Police John Huba's search efforts. The Haber brothers, along with the professor's wife, offered a substantial reward for information leading to his whereabouts. As for a motive behind the disappearance, everyone was stumped; Dr. Haber wasn't known to have an enemy in the world. Nor was he believed to be harboring any dark secrets, or involved in any scandals. He did not drink, smoke or gamble. This led his wife to conclude that he had been the victim of amnesia.

"I feel very strongly that's what it is," Mrs. Haber told reporters. "There was nothing wrong here in the family. We can't get any clue on which we can tie his disappearance. All we can do now is sit and be hopeful."

The chief of police shared Mrs. Haber's belief, and indicated that Vernon Haber might be roaming the Nittany Mountains in a confused state, not knowing where he was, and not understanding how he had gotten there.




Breakfast at Titusville


As so often happens in such cases, police investigated every lead, no matter how far-fetched. A truck driver named Charles Bright told authorities that he had seen Dr. Haber walking along the road near Kittanning, more than 100 miles west of State College. Bright told police that the man appeared to be "acting peculiar". A married couple from Titusville swore that Dr. Haber had eaten breakfast with them a few days later, and that they were impressed by the man's "scholarly air", although the unexpected visitor wore a blank, dazed expression on his face. The man said he was on his way to Spartansburg, near Lake Erie. After it was learned that Dr. Haber was a 1914 graduate of Ohio State University and that he had a sister living in Ohio, a westward trek didn't seem out of the question. The State Police issued dispatches to Crawford and Armstrong counties. The man in question could not be found.

On June 6 it was reported that Dr. Haber might have had some deep, dark secrets after all. The Sunbury Daily Item wrote:

A member of the zoology department has been quoted as saying he could tell volunteer searchers something but he won't because it might upset things in the zoology department. The man refused to expand on his statement.

Penn State faculty, on the other hand, vigorously denied rumors of any friction within the zoology department.

By the end of June the search had fizzled out. Photographs of the missing professor were printed in newspapers across the country, but leads were scarce. It was as if the man had vanished into thin air. Mrs. Julia Haber was the only one who continued to cling to the hope that her husband was still alive. She printed out descriptive fliers by the thousands, distributing them to every state. Three thousand fliers were mailed to sheriffs from Maine to Alaska, thousands more were mailed to radio stations. She tracked down former colleagues of her husband in Arizona, California, Colorado and Mississippi and mailed hundreds of fliers to them as well. She telephoned pawn shops all across the country, asking to see if anyone has brought in one of the items he had carried on his person the day he vanished-- a gold pocketwatch, a monogrammed silver belt buckle.

And then came word from Blair County on July 13 that a man matching Dr. Haber's description was found dead at the edge of a game preserve near Muleshoe Curve. It appeared that the man had died several weeks earlier. Dental records later revealed that this man could not have been Haber. This news must have been a great relief to Julia-- but this relief would be short-lived.



The Body Found at Last


On August 12, a student named Harry O'Connell was on a berry picking expedition with his brother-in-law, Harris Lyon, near Rockview Penitentiary when he spotted a pair of shoes on the ground. Looking up, he saw a badly decomposed body hanging from the upper branch of a tall pine tree, about eight feet off the ground. Clifford Schreckengost, of the State Police substation at Rockview, was the first to arrive on the scene with his two deputies. They notified Captain Philip Mark, chief of the campus police, who identified the body through papers found in the dead man's wallet.

Coroner Charles Sheckler stated immediately that death had been caused by strangulation. "It's definitely suicide by hanging," the coroner announced, adding that there would be no inquest.

Julia Haber, however, found it difficult to accept the coroner's theory. There were just too many things that didn't make sense. She could not think of any reason for her husband to take his own life. And hadn't that very area been searched extensively and repeatedly by hundreds of volunteers? Surely the stench of a rotting corpse left in the summer sun for weeks on end would've attracted vultures, buzzards and other birds of prey. And how could such a short, middle-aged man of such a slight build-- Dr. Haber weighed just 135 pounds-- hang himself from a tall tree eight feet off the ground? While wearing dress shoes and a business suit, no less! No, this explanation just didn't make any sense to the bewildered widow. Things also took a strange turn when the finders of the body filed a joint claim demanding the reward money from Mrs. Haber for finding the body, well before she even had a chance to recover from the shocking news and plan a funeral for her beloved husband.
 
In spite of his twenty-four years of service to Penn State University, Dr. Vernon Haber scarcely received a worthy send-off. He was quietly laid to rest at Buffalo Cemetery in Cheektowaga, New York, where his wife had been born and raised. They had met at Cornell University when Vernon was a PhD student and Julia Moesel was a member of the college faculty. They were married in December of 1919.

The Professor's Last Days 


Sadly, the secret behind the suicide of Dr. Haber remains a perplexing mystery. What exactly happened on the day of his disappearance? Was it rope that he was searching for when a faculty member's wife had seen him shopping downtown that fateful morning? And if so, what made him leave his laboratory after just thirty minutes? Could it have anything to with the "secret" that one man refused to divulge to the press, a secret that would cause a major shake-up in the zoology department? A secret love affair perhaps? It is interesting to note that Julia's name is etched in granite beside Vernon's name on the gravemarker they share in New York, although the date of her death is left blank. Did Mrs. Haber discover something that made her change her mind about being buried alongside her husband? It's an interesting thing to ponder.

And where had he gone between the day of his disappearance on June 2 and the discovery of his body on August 12? Obviously he couldn't have been hanging from a tree the entire time-- the area had been combed by hundreds of searchers. Could he have gone to Indiana or Ohio to visit somebody? Could it have been Dr. Haber who stopped for breakfast in Titusville along the way after hitching a ride to Kittanning?

Perhaps even sadder still is the fact that State College has done precious little to preserve the memory of Professor Haber. No dormitories or libraries bear his name, no tributes appeared in local papers after his death. Yet Vernon Haber left his mark in his field of study;  In May of 1937, Time Magazine published a short article, "Salt v. Insect," highlighting Haber's discovery of Epsom salt as a powerful insecticide for killing the Mexican bean beetle, while his 1926 study of the Carolina tree frog is considered one of the earliest and most important studies of the species.






Sources:

Gettysburg Times,  June 5, 1947
The Daily Republican, June 5, 1947.
New Castle News, June 5, 1947.
Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, June 6, 1947.
Sunbury Daily Item, June 6, 1947.
Kane Republican, June 7, 1947.
Shamokin News-Dispatch, June 30, 1947.
Altoona Tribune, July 14, 1947.
Franklin News-Herald, July 18, 1947.
Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, Aug. 12, 1947.
Lock Haven Express, Aug. 15, 1947.