The Dissection of Anna Castner
In February of 1930, neighbors took notice of Anna Castner's absence, and when asked about her whereabouts, her husband explained that, on Valentine's Day, he had given Anna $12 to go shopping, but she never returned. Some doubted the veracity of this story; the Castners were an impoverished family, and any extra money they were able to squirrel away was invariably spent by Gervase on liquor. The Castners were so poor, in fact, that they had to rely on the charity of friends and neighbors to put food on their table and clothes on their backs.
On the Friday morning of February 21, a neighbor girl who lived just a few doors away, 15-year-old Sadie (Sarah) McHugh, went to the Castner home with a basket of food for Gervase and Anna's children. Sadie was a niece of Anna Castner; her mother, Mary, was Anna's sister. When Sadie entered the home at around 11:30, she noticed a blanket-covered bundle on the living room floor. But what sent shivers up her spine was that there appeared to be a woman's shoe protruding from under the blanket. Sadie bent down to lift the blanket, when she was suddenly grabbed by Gervase Castner, who shoved her out of the house.
When Sadie returned home, she told her mother about the bundle and Mr. Castner's bizarre behavior. She implored her mother to pay a visit to the Castner house, but Mrs. McHugh was bedridden at the time with a jaw abscess. Undeterred, the curious teenager convinced her brother and sister to investigate, but they, too, were shooed away by Gervase. They brought the matter to the attention of the Avoca police department.
Crawling in Creepiness
A few hours later, Avoca police chief Patrick Farrell, accompanied by undertaker W.C. Martin, arrived in Brown's Patch and demanded entry to the home. Three of the Castner children were at home in a crib, and it was evident they were all suffering from malnutrition. The home was a pigsty, and Farrell and Martin found Gervase Castner clad in filthy clothing, with about two week's worth of stubble. There was no food in the kitchen, and despite the February mountain chill, the coal stove was out of fuel.
Chief of Police Farrell questioned Castner about his wife's whereabouts, but was told the same story Castner had told his friends and neighbors. He appeared to be in an inebriated state. Farrell and Martin glanced around the house, but could find no trace of the blanket which Sadie claimed to have seen. But they did notice that the walls seemed to be smeared with a dark substance that looked like blood.
The two men searched the first floor but could find no evidence of a crime. Next, they made their way down to the dark, musty cellar, crawling on their hands and knees to avoid hitting their heads on the low ceiling. The basement contained two rooms-- one room that was three feet in height, and a smaller adjoining room that was only two feet high. It was in this crawlspace, which was directly beneath the kitchen, where Chief Farrell's lantern illuminated a ghastly surprise-- the severed head of Anna Castner. Anna's torso was lying nearby, one of its arms and both legs missing.
After regaining their composure, Chief Farrell and Undertaker Martin continued their search in the larger of the two rooms and found Anna's arm and legs, wrapped in a burlap sack and stuffed into a hole in the wall. Chief Farrell placed Gervase Castner under arrest and promptly notified the Wyoming state police barracks. Troopers Spotts and Koval came and took Castner away, though he was in such a pitiable condition that they didn't even bother to put him in handcuffs.
Captain William A. Clark and County Detectives Richard Powell and Dempsey soon arrived on the scene, and were joined by Coroner Luther Kniffen and Deputy Coroner W.J. Davidson. Because all the men were too large to fit into the crawlspace to retrieve the head and torso, this gruesome task was performed by Frank Drous, a small and slender miner whom Chief Farrell flagged down outside the house.
The Coroner's Report
A search of the Castner kitchen turned up a carpenter's saw, with scraps of human flesh still clinging to its teeth, but detectives believed that the dissection had taken place in the bedroom of the Dawson Avenue home. Anna's remains were examined by the coroner's physician, Dr. H. Gordon Guyler, but Guyler was unable to determine whether the victim had been dead or alive at the time of her dissection. Dr. Guyler noticed, however, that the woman's face, head, arms, legs and chest were covered with bruises, proving that she had been brutally beaten.
The body, according to Dr. Guyler's report, had been cut into two at the waist, while an unsuccessful attempt had been made to saw off the arm that was still attached to the torso. When found, Anna had been dead for several days, but Guyler noted that the body-- despite being battered and mutilated-- was in an otherwise excellent state of preservation due to the cold weather.
As authorities sought answers that Gervase Castner was still too drunk to answer, those who knew the Castners were interviewed. These included Mrs. Elizabeth Guilloran, Castner's sister, who happened to be married to the chief of police in nearby Dupont. Elizabeth was a frequent visitor; she had been there the previous day to pay workmen for repairing a leaky pipe in the Castner home. She told authorities that she hadn't seen anything suspicious during her visit. To the best of her knowledge, Anna had run out on her drunken husband. According to Sadie's father, Michael McHugh, the Castners had frequent domestic quarrels throughout their six years of marriage. McHugh said that he'd recently seen Gervase hit Anna with an iron pipe in their back yard.
Castner, who was seriously injured in a mine accident several years earlier, had a metal plate in his head, and it was said that he had been suffering from "mental difficulties" ever since. Making matters worse, Castner was beaten and robbed a short time later in Dupont; he was found lying in an unconscious condition alongside the railroad tracks and spent three months in Pittston Hospital recovering. Unable to return to his former position, he found work at the Pittston Coal Company's Butler Colliery alongside those who were either too old, too young, or too maimed to work down in the mines. He had been paid the previous Monday, and friends said that he had been on a drinking binge since payday.
On Saturday, Anna's remains were buried in St. Mary's Cemetery in Avoca. Neither her husband nor her children, who were taken in by relatives, were permitted to attend.
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| Gervase Castner, after being forced to shave and bathe. |
Castner's Confession
By Sunday, authorities still weren't able to get any information out of Castner, who remained in a stupor. They did manage to get him to bathe and shave, however, though the prisoner-- his supply of alcohol suddenly cut off-- grew quite ill and had to be transported to the hospital for treatment of his withdrawal symptoms. On Monday, February 24, Castner confessed to the murder of his wife at the state police barracks and was arraigned in Wyoming before Justice of the Peace Edward F. Mott. He was then taken to the Luzerne County Prison to await trial.
On March 6, the same day that Gervase Castner was indicted by the Luzerne County grand jury, the victim's bedridden sister, Mary McHugh, died suddenly at the age of 46. Even though her abscess had been successfully treated and she appeared well on her way to a full recovery, it was believed that the news of her sister's murder had caused her to relapse.
The Murder Trial
Although Castner's court-appointed attorney, W.A. Gillespie, asked the court for a continuance, the murder trial got under way on schedule, with jury selection beginning on March 24, 1930. Castner entered a plea of "guilty generally", leaving it up to the jury to fix the degree of guilt.
Ever since Castner had made his confession to the state police, certain information had been kept from the public to protect the commonwealth's case. For instance, shortly after her burial, Anna's corpse had been disinterred and a second post-mortem examination was made by Dr. Daly and Dr. Helman at the request of the coroner's office, in an attempt to pin down Anna's exact cause of death.
In opening its case before Judge Benjamin R. Jones, Assistant District Attorneys John R. Hessell and Don Coughlin described the killing of Anna Castner as the most gruesome crime in the history of Luzerne County. Their first witness was Dr. Guyler, who stated that Anna's death had been caused by loss of blood from a severe beating. Guyler's testimony was followed by that of Dr. W.S. Baskett, superintendent of the Retreat Hospital for the Insane. Dr. Baskett said that he had visited Castner in jail and found him to be "perfectly sane". Caster, Baskett testified, insisted that it was Anna who was always drunk, and the reason for the family's squalor was because she spent all his money on whiskey. Castner said that he had only taken up drinking to deal with his wife's drinking.
According to Baskett's testimony, Castner had come home on February 19 to find Anna passed out on the couch in a drunken stupor. When he tried to rouse her, she fell off the couch and struck her head on a metal washtub. He then said that he covered the body with a coat, and when he went to check on her in the morning, she was dead.
When Gervase Castner took the stand he told a different story. He said that he had returned home on February 13 to find his wife drunk. An argument ensued, blows were struck, and Castner vaguely recalled striking his wife over the head with a blunt object, though he couldn't recall what it was. As she was lying on the kitchen floor, Castner got drunk and fell asleep. He awakened during the night and found that a pipe had burst, leaving water all over the kitchen floor. he dragged Anna's body into the living room and covered it with a coat. As for the dismemberment of the body, he couldn't recall when or how it had happened.
Castner was returned to jail to await Judge Jones' decision, which he reached on May 14. Judge Jones found him guilty of murder in the second degree and he was sentenced to the Eastern Penitentiary for a term of 10 to 20 years.
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| A vacant lot where the Castner home once stood. |
The Aftermath
In June of the following year, tragedy again visited the Castner family when Gervase's mother, Catherine, was struck and killed by an automobile at the intersection of Main and Park streets in Avoca while visiting one of her daughters. Tragedy was nothing new for the family, however; not only did Catherine live long enough to see the death of her husband, the murder of her daughter-in-law, the imprisonment of her son and the orphaning of four of her grandchildren, but she had also endured the death of a son, Joseph, who was killed in the mines at the age of 20. Her daughter, Elizabeth Castner Guillorn, would die from cancer in 1939 at the age of 39.
On Halloween morning of 1931, the unoccupied three-room house at 1543 Dawson Street, in which Anna Castner was beaten, murdered and dissected, was partially destroyed by a suspicious fire. The fire, which broke out shortly after eight o'clock in the morning, was traced to the same corner of the cellar where Anna's severed head was found. The cause of the blaze was never determined. Today, all that remains of the scene of the ghastly murder is a vacant lot.
On November 26, 1936, Gervase Castner was granted parole after serving a little over six years of his sentence. Ironically, it was the same judge who had sentenced him, Benjamin Jones, who recommended his parole to the Board of Pardons in Harrisburg, citing Castner's record as a model inmate. He received a full pardon the following year and took up residence at the former home of his parents on Lidy Road in Dupont. In 1950 he moved to Paterson, New Jersey, and found work in the garment dyeing industry. After a lengthy illness, he passed away in the Paterson Hospital on October 26, 1960, at the age of 62, and was buried at Calvary Cemetery.
Sources:
Scranton Times, Feb. 22, 1930.
Wilkes-Barre Record, Feb. 22, 1930
Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, Feb. 24, 1930
Scranton Times-Tribune, Feb. 25, 1930
Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, March 7, 1930
Pittston Gazette, March 24, 1930
Scranton Tribune, March 25, 1930
Pittston Gazette, March 25, 1930
Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, May 14, 1930
Pittston Gazette, Oct. 31, 1931.
Pittston Gazette, Nov. 23, 1936.
Paterson Morning Call, Oct. 28, 1960.
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