The Murder of Harvey Willow

 

(Listen to the audio version of this story here)

On Monday, December 10, 1923, a 38-year-old farmer left his home near Selinsgrove to go hunting in App's Woods. Harvey Cleveland Willow knew these woods like the faces of his own children; that he might never return was a thought that never crossed his mind. When Tuesday morning dawned crisp and cold without his return, his wife sent their eleven-year-old son, Glenn, to the home of a neighbor to learn if he knew of Harvey's whereabouts. It was this neighbor, Lewis Gemberling, who located the missing hunter in a clump of woodland on the property of Norman App, with the back of his skull blown off. And so begins the tale of one of the most shocking crimes in the history of Snyder County.

Members of Troop C of the state police at Pottsville were assigned to the case, but it was a mere child who located the first clue. At the scene of the crime, just thirteen feet from the spot where Willow's body was discovered, a young boy named Renninger found a yellow shotgun shell, which was a Winchester 12-gauge variety. Police initially dismissed this find, as they had thoroughly searched for clues, and suspected that the shell may have been planted there intentionally to put the authorities on the wrong trail.

Brass Knuckles and a Bushel of Theories

Snyder County had a reputation for moonshining (infamous bootlegger Preacher Gill lived just a few miles away) and some locals insisted that Willow had been killed by a bootlegger after stumbling across an illegal still. Others believed Willow had been killed for money; he was carrying one hundred dollars on the day he disappeared and was going to pay a bill in Middleburg later that day. The money was not found on Willow's body. Relatives of the dead man favored the robbery motive. Martin Luther Kratzer, father-in-law of the victim, told the coroner's jury that he believed Willow had been killed accidentally by a careless hunter who fled the scene after learning of his folly. Still others, however, whispered that a 15-year-old girl, a relative of Harvey Willow, was romantically involved with one of the leading suspects in the case. This man was regarded as a shady character and was known to law enforcement for a variety of questionable activities in the vicinity, though he was not known to be a man of violence.

But the prevailing theory was that Harvey Willow had been killed out of revenge. Nine years earlier, Willow, along with Martin Luther Kratzer and his son Ralph, was involved in a New Year's Day fracas which resulted in the death of George Spaid. Armed with brass knuckles, Willow and the Kratzer boys went to Selinsgrove looking for a fight but were unable to find any dance partners. At Kaiser's Hotel they bumped into Spaid, an elderly farmer whose only offense was trying to squeeze through a doorway which the Kratzers had blocked. Willow dropped the old man with a single blow to the jaw. His head hit the curb and he never woke up. Willow spent a year in county jail as a result. After the finding of Willow's body, many residents wondered if perhaps a relative of Spaid had quietly bided his time, waiting for the perfect opportunity to avenge the old man's death.

Harvey and Annie Willow

State Police Stumped

On December 17, five state policemen took a neighbor, Miles Kline, into custody and grilled him at the courthouse in Middleburg, using questionable tactics trying to wring a confession out of him. They grilled him again on December 19, though authorities didn't glean enough information to make an arrest. The repeated detainment and questioning of Kline, combined with the tight lips of state police, led local newspapers to report that investigators had been unable to unearth any other leads. This assumption proved correct; on December 22, the troopers left Selinsgrove and returned to Pottsville.

District Attorney William K. Miller wasn't happy that the state police had given up so easily. Unlike the vaunted Canadian Mounties, the Pennsylvania State Police had developed a reputation for never getting their man; they had failed to identify the killers in many high-profile cases of the era, from the baffling Lamb's Gap Murders to the mysterious slaying of Mennonite church worker Norman Bechtel. In mid-January, District Attorney Miller announced that he would petition the county court to appoint a special detective to work on the case which the state police had so hastily abandoned. His wish was granted and Selinsgrove constable Francis Gemberling was appointed County Detective by Judge Miles Potter.

Reward Offered

In March, Snyder County commissioners, acting on the advice of Judge Potter and Detective Gemberling, agreed to offer a $1,000 reward for information leading the arrest of Harvey Willow's killer. With sparsely-populated Snyder County being the sort of place where everyone knew everyone else's business, Gemberling knew that secrets were hard to keep. To the cash-strapped rural denizens living along Penn's Creek, the lure of the large cash award was enough to loosen tongues and, before long, tips came rolling in. By May, local papers hinted that a major break in the investigation was about to take place. 

Trooper Arthur R. Fox of the state police went to Snyder County as a special investigator, working alongside Detective Gemberling. As May drew to a close it was rumored that Trooper Fox had uncovered some damning evidence pointing the finger of blame not on a misanthropic moonshiner or a hapless hunter, but on a member of the dead farmer's household. Fox would neither confirm nor deny these rumors, but he did admit that the case was, in his words, a "cobweb". Major Lynn G. Adams, superintendent of the state police, arrived from Harrisburg at month's end to confer with Fox, and the following day Trooper Fox headed to court-- a clear sign that he intended to ask the judge for a warrant.

 

The Willow Web Untangled

Seventeen-year-old Ralph Harrison Shadel was one of the workers employed by Willow on his sixty-acre farm. He was more than a farmhand; he was considered a friend by Willow, who often took the boy hunting with him. To Harvey Willow, the young man was almost a member of the family. But, if Ralph Shadel had been more aware of his surroundings, he might've noticed two men in the shadows watching his every move, following him wherever he went.

Fox and Gemberling had been stalking Shadel for weeks. They had spent hours in the woods, observing the boy inside the Willow home, watching his interactions with Annie Willow and her children, Glenn and Ivah Catherine. They found it odd that Shadel seemed to have broken off his friendships in Selinsgrove. Whenever Ralph used to go to Selinsgrove with Mrs. Willow to run errands he would invariably park his car on Market Street, but, as of late, he had made a habit of parking on darkened side streets, remaining inside the vehicle, as if he did not wish to be seen by any of his old acquaintances. Fox and Gemberling found this change in routine very strange.

In a bold move, Fox had two of his troopers hide a dictaphone inside the Willow home, which recorded conversations onto wax cylinders. As luck would have it, a calf belonging to the Willows had become sick, and Fox and Gemberling helped Ralph and Annie nurse the animal in the barn, allowing the two plainclothes officers an opportunity to hide the listening device. Next, they opened a window and hung an amplifier outside, which allowed the troopers to overhear the conversation after Fox and Gemberling returned from the barn. Fox and Gemberling got the ball rolling by declaring their intention to have Harvey's body exhumed. After putting the scare into Annie Willow, they took their leave.

But now there was a problem. The two troopers who were supposed to be listening to the conversation inside the farmhouse had become either bored or distracted. Fox found them loafing next to his car in full view, instead of hiding in the bushes. The immediate reaction to the lawmen's parting words had been lost. When the two troopers finally took their places, all was quiet inside the Willow home, for Annie and Ralph had gone upstairs to bed. But, fortunately, the dictaphone was sensitive enough to capture the sounds of intimacy between the seventeen-year-old farmhand and the woman more than twice his age.

Now came the problem of getting the listening device out of the home. Fox and Gemberling returned the next morning. While Fox distracted Annie Willow in the kitchen, Gemberling waited outside the window, intending to reach inside and unhook the dictaphone. He couldn't quite reach it and was struggling to unplug the device when Mrs. Willow walked into the room to fetch a photo album and saw the detective halfway through the window. "What do you think you're doing?" demanded Mrs. Willow. "My God, you scared me."

"Just trying to fix your screen," replied Gemberling, his quick thinking saving the day. Annie retrieved the photo album and returned to the kitchen, allowing Gemberling to finish the job. Fox and Gemberling returned to Selinsgrove, only to learn that the state police headquarters had once again pulled the plug on the investigation. Fox was instructed to return to Pottsville. The two men talked it over, and then decided on their most audacious plan yet: They would arrest Ralph Shadel, question him relentlessly about what they had overheard, and hope that the boy would confess. 

The Farmhand Confesses

Ralph Shadel was interrogated by Trooper Fox in Middleburg and the boy admitted to shooting his 38-year-old employer. According to Shadel, he came to live with the Willows in March of 1923, after Harvey rented the Marburger farm in Monroe Township, and just as soon as he arrived, Annie Willow began to seduce him. Afterwards, she begged Shadel to get Harvey "out of the way" so that they could be together.

"On Monday, December 10, me and Harvey was working around the barn in the morning and Harvey said, 'Let's go hunting', and I went and got my gun," said Shadel to Trooper Fox. "When I went to the house she said, 'Now, Ralph, you shoot Harvey and make a good job of it' and we went out back of the house a while. Then I told Harvey that his brother said there were lots of rabbits up in App's Woods."

According to Shadel, as they walked through App's field, he kept back a few paces, then fired the first of two shots. Harvey screamed then fell to his knees. Shadel reloaded, stepped toward the fallen man, and shot him in the back of the head at close range. After telling Annie Willow what he had done, she instructed him to call her brother, Ralph Kratzer, and tell him that Harvey was missing. Accompanied by the Kratzers, Shadel pretended to search for the body all morning. When Fox asked about the missing money, Shadel admitted that he and Annie had made up the story about Harvey carrying cash to make it look as if he had been robbed.

 

Annie Reveals Motive

Annie was arrested on August 4, 1924, and given a hearing before Justice of the Peace Wills, during which she denied Shadel's story. She eventually confessed, telling detectives that she had seduced Shadel just to make her husband jealous because he was running around with other women. She then claimed that Harvey was abusive, and had threatened her life on multiple occasions, and had once thrown an axe at her. She claimed that she would have left him, but stayed for the sake of the children.
As unsavory as the Kratzer family reputation was around Snyder County, they refused to offer aid to Annie as she languished in jail. Brawling and fighting was one thing, but Ralph and Martin Luther Kratzer drew the line at murder. As a result, it was the Reformed Church of Selinsgrove which offered prayers and hymns at the Middleburg jail, passing around a collection plate to ensure that the Willow children were properly cared for. 

 
Shameless Tactics and an Ugly Trial

District Attorney Miller pushed for a first-degree murder conviction when the trial of Ralph Shadel opened on October 6, but the jury found him guilty of murder in the second-degree on October 11, which also happened to be Shadel's eighteenth birthday. Ironically, the jury handed Shadel the best birthday present of all-- the gift of life. He succeeded in escaping the electric chair, and was sentenced by Judge Potter to 10-20 years at Eastern Penitentiary.

Undoubtedly, the jury was swayed by the closing argument of Shadel's defense attorney, A. Francis Gilbert, who explained the cause of his client's actions. "Many a man has been saved from the penalty of death because they committed crimes while drunk with liquor," he declared. "Then, how about this boy, who was intoxicated by the greatest stimulant-- a bad woman?"

Shadel smiled when Judge Potter told him how lucky he was and the grateful teenager served his sentence dutifully. He lived a clean and quiet life after his release.

 

Annie's trial got under way the following week with Emanuel E. Pawling, A. Francis Gilbert and a former federal judge, Albert W. Johnson, as her defense attorneys. Annie took the stand in her own defense on October 15. As was expected, she told the court about her rough treatment at the hands of her husband. "He was cruel to me," Annie testified. "Kicked me, choked me and then threw me down the steps." At four times during her testimony she denied that she knew anything about the murder, and attempted to blame the killing entirely on the teenage farmhand. "Shadel wanted me to put rat poison in Harvey's food, but I wouldn't."

Shadel was called as a witness for the prosecution and took the stand to establish the time, day and killing of Harvey Willow, but was not cross-examined, as his lawyer argued that his testimony might further incriminate himself. Annie turned her back when he entered the courtroom, and during the trial they didn't make eye contact.

One of the most sensational moments of the trial came when the Willow family physician, Dr. E.R. Decker, testified on behalf of the prosecution that he had drugged Annie Willow with a "truth serum" on his own initiative. While Annie was in jail, Dr. Decker gave her morphine, followed by a shot of scopalin. This turned out to be a break for the defense, ad the doctor admitted that he didn't know what to make of the results.

"She did not tell me what I thought she would," said Dr. Decker, who had expected astonishing details to spill from her mouth. Instead, Annie babbled at length about Ralph Shadel. "Not Ralph the confessed murderer, but Ralph the farmhand, bringing in the coal," stated the doctor. "Either she was not guilty, or the drug did not work."

Annie's defense attorneys, Pawling, Gilbert and Johnson, pushed for acquittal. They painted Annie as an abused and naive woman who was taken advantage of by a handsome young man-- a woman who attempted to talk Shadel out of murder but kept quiet for eight months because she feared for her own life. In an attempt to prove this point, the defense produced letters allegedly written to Annie by Shadel from his jail cell after his confession, in which Shadel purportedly admitted lying to detectives and absolving Annie from any wrongdoing. The prosecution, however, countered by producing a witness named Wetzel, a previous farmhand whom Willow had caught in bed with his wife. They also got Sheriff John Runkle to testify to the fact that the paper upon which these notes had been written was the same type of paper the sheriff had supplied to only one of the accused-- Annie Willow.

But the shameless (and presumably criminal) tactics of the defense did not stop at forgery; at the end of the trial, the indictment upon which the whole trial was based mysteriously disappeared just before the jury was headed to deliberation. Without this document, the testimony given during the week's trial would be inadmissible. Perhaps not surprisingly, the indictment was last seen in the hands of Annie Willow's attorney, Albert Johnson, who was upbraided by Judge Potter for "gross negligence". Despite the missing indictment, Judge Potter ordered the jury to render a verdict, vowing that he would find the lost document one way or another.

 

Meanwhile, outside the courtroom, a campaign was being waged to drum up sympathy for Annie. Only a few local papers mentioned Wetzel, and those that did glossed over his illicit relationship with the defendant. The local press ran staged photos Annie reading her Bible and the Willow children looking downtrodden. One particularly shameless photo-- also clearly staged-- depicts Glenn and Ivah sitting on their porch in their Sunday best, locked in an embrace as they solemnly gaze at a photograph of their mother. The ploy was obvious; if the newspaper editors could convince just one juror to hold out, Annie Willow would walk out of the courtroom a free woman. The jurors, however, were not easily duped. Annie Willow was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 10-20 years in prison, which she served at the Allegheny County Workhouse in Blawnox.

The Aftermath

In January of 1935, Ralph Shadel and Annie Willow were released from prison early on good behavior and returned to Monroe Township. They had kept in touch through letters during their imprisonment in which they agreed to get married someday, but that day never came. Annie married another man, Aaron Valentine, shortly after her release and moved to the borough of Dauphin, where she remained until her death in 1958 at the age of 71. As for Ralph Shadel, he soon married, too. In March of 1937 he married Pearl Elizabeth Clotfelter and together they had two sons. Shadel died in 1982 at the age of 75.




Sources:

Shamokin News-Dispatch, Dec. 17, 1923.
Sunbury Daily Item, Dec. 19, 1923.
Shamokin News-Dispatch, Jan. 14, 1924.
Mount Carmel Item, Jan. 24, 1924.
Selinsgrove Times-Tribune, March 6, 1924.
Selinsgrove Times-Tribune, May 29, 1924.
Selinsgrove Times-Tribune, Aug. 7, 1924.
Lebanon Daily News, Aug. 18, 1924.
Shamokin News-Dispatch, Oct. 11, 1924.
Shamokin News-Dispatch, Oct. 15, 1924.
Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader, Oct. 16, 1924.
Mount Carmel Item, Oct. 17, 1924.
Shamokin News-Dispatch, Jan. 8, 1935.