Coal Region Outlaws: David Shaffer

David Shaffer

 

By the age of 28, David Charles Shaffer had lived more than half his life as a criminal. Born in Shamokin on November 29, 1906, Shaffer found himself in the Huntingdon Industrial Reformatory as a teenager. As an adult, David was part of the gang which included local underworld figures like John and Harry Mansfield, Scotty Osborne, Calvin Tyson, Francis "Puggy" Ryan and Al Corcoran. It is only by luck that Shaffer escaped the same grisly fate as John Mansfield (whose bullet-riddled body would be found in Kulpmont in 1939); thanks to a sympathetic jury, Shaffer would spend the rest of his life behind bars, rather than being "taken for a ride" by rival thugs or dying in the Rockview Penitentiary electric chair.

Yet, for David Shaffer, the wheels of fate had been in motion for over a decade. It was April of 1925 when Shaffer was arrested, along with Harry Mansfield and Scotty Osborne, for a string of armed robberies in the Shamokin area. Their capers ranged from tying up and robbing Charles Jakai and Andy Zamburi inside their South Sixth Street shoe store, to robbing the Milton Candy Kitchen and the drycleaning shop of Reuben Zandle on North Second Street. Shaffer, along with Harry Mansfield, Al Corcoran and Ted Barni, also faced charges of armed robbery for holding up the Trevorton Hotel and shooting its proprietor, Ben Arrison. And these were just the robberies to which the gang confessed.

On April 23, 1925, Shaffer was sentenced to five to ten years at the Eastern Penitentiary. Because of "good behavior", he was transferred to Northumberland County Prison a few months later. Jennie Noot, a Sunbury welfare worker, believing that young David Shaffer was simply a misguided youth, took pity on him and was able to convince the parole board to release him in January of 1929. Shaffer repaid Jennie Noot by promptly robbing her of her purse. He would go on to rob the Student Klothes Shop in Sunbury and the Hoover-Troxell Company in Shamokin before being sent back to Eastern Penitentiary. He was paroled again on September 10, 1934, but Shaffer would be sent back to prison the following year-- this time for life.

An Intercepted Call

On Saturday, October 12, 1935, Corporal William S. Bloom and Trooper Lester Lucas of the state police traveled to Shamokin to take the paroled convict into custody. Shaffer, along with Frank Ryan, was wanted for questioning in the robbery of a nightclub in Shickshinny. Police had tried to arrest Ryan in Shenandoah a few days earlier, but he made a daring escape while handcuffed. An intercepted phone call made to Wilkes-Barre from Shamokin led police to believe that Shaffer had been one of the nightclub bandits. Shaffer's girlfriend, Roberta Gessner, was contacted by police and she agreed to call Corporal Bloom if David tried to get in touch with her.

Roberta called the barracks and said that she was to meet Shaffer at 8 o'clock in front of the home of W.A. Conway, a National Ticket Company executive, on North Rock Street. David Shaffer's eighteen-year-old sister, Bertha, had just arrived outside Roberta's home and was waiting to drive her to her rendezvous with her lover. He had warned Roberta to be discrete, as the police were "hot on his trail". Corporal Bloom and Trooper Lucas immediately departed for North Rock Street. There was no time to formulate a plan or lay a trap; the traffic was heavy and they were racing the clock. As a result, they had no choice but to drive to their destination in a marked police car. This decision would ultimately prove fatal for the convict's teenage sister.

The Shootout

When the police cruiser arrived at the Conway residence at 314 North Rock Street, Corporal Bloom got out and approached Roberta and Bertha, who were standing on the steps outside the house. Since Lucas was in uniform and Bloom was in plainclothes, it was decided that Lucas should wait in the car. Lucas drove away in search of a more discrete parking spot and had just pulled into a spot when a black Ford sedan approached and slowed to a stop near the two girls. Suddenly, Bertha screamed out a warning to her brother. "Keep going!" she shouted. "The cops are here for you!"

Almost immediately, the sound of gunfire pierced the air. Five shots were fired from Shaffer's vehicle, the first of which struck Bertha, who had been standing between Corporal Bloom and the car. Bertha dropped to the pavement. Three bullets tore into Corporal Bloom, and he fell beside her. Trooper Lucas had already gotten out of the car; by the time he was back behind the wheel, Shaffer was almost out of view. He fired at the fleeing automobile, striking it twice, but the car careened around the sharp turn at the intersection of Rock and Spurzheim and disappeared on Lincoln.

Meanwhile, concerned motorists and pedestrians stopped to render whatever aid they could. Earle Humphrey put the badly wounded girl in his car and raced to Shamokin Hospital, but she died along the way. Trooper Lucas, assisted by Patrolman Sminkey, rushed his partner to the hospital in the police car, but Bloom had lost so much blood that few held any hope for his recovery.

A post mortem examination revealed that Bertha Shaffer had been killed from a gunshot wound which entered her neck and exited out the back of her skull. Three shots had struck Bloom-- one in the hand, one in the right shoulder, and the last in the left shoulder. This bullet had damaged the spiral column, leaving him paralyzed. Chief Surgeon George Reese described his condition as "extremely critical".

The Manhunt

Members of the city police force were already in hot pursuit of Shaffer while Trooper Lucas was on his way to the hospital. Lucas then joined the hunt, while Captain Samuel Gearhart, commander of Troop C in Reading, flashed a message to Captain Price of the State Highway Patrol. Within minutes, hundreds of troopers were prowling the roads and highways of central Pennsylvania for the cold-hearted killer.
Captain Gearhart departed for Shamokin to direct the manhunt. Those involved included Sergeant Ray Simmons and Trooper John Schiedel of the Tamaqua barracks, who had been formerly attached to the state police substation in Tharptown. The Tharptown barracks soon looked like a military base; dozens of stern-faced men in helmets, armed with high-powered rifles, came and went in silence. Other officers and detectives in plainclothes sped away from the barracks after receiving their orders from Captain Gearhart. The Shamokin Hospital could be clearly seen on the hill beyond the barracks, and it seemed as if every trooper cast a grim eye toward the hospital on his way out the door, ever mindful of the fact that one of their own was fighting for life behind those brick walls.

Virtually everyone with a badge showed up in Tharptown to offer their assistance. Private detective Bert Kane (of the Kane Detective Agency) was paired up with a trooper and dispatched to Sunbury, while County Detective Donald Zimmerman was enlisted to join in the hunt. Over the weekend, thousands of motorists were stopped at checkpoints and the trunks of their vehicles searched. The search area extended to Williamsport, Harrisburg, Bloomsburg and Pottsville. According to the Shamokin News-Dispatch, one unlucky driver was stopped six times between Saturday and Sunday. In Williamsport, Reverend Beck of the Nescopeck Reformed Church found himself staring into the barrels of six shiny revolvers after he reached a little too quickly for his identification after being stopped at a state police checkpoint. It was a mild annoyance but most citizens took it in stride, as few could sympathize with an outlaw who left his own sister to die on a city sidewalk.

The Courageous Corporal

The following week, as Bertha Shaffer was being laid to rest at Odd Fellows Cemetery, the search for her killer extended into Detroit, Philadelphia, and other cities where he was known to have underworld connections. In Erie, David Shaffer and Frank Ryan were positively identified as the two men who had held up a nightclub in September. Former cellmates and ex-lovers were needled by investigators, and, before long, authorities believed they had Shaffer in their sights. Chief Good of the Williamsport Police Department traced Shaffer to Jersey Shore, where the killer had abandoned his vehicle. 

As for Corporal Bloom, he appeared in good spirits, though his recovery was still uncertain after surgeons removed a bullet from his spine. "I'm good for a while yet," he told reporters from his hospital bed. "I can take it. Invariably, the law-breaker gets the breaks."

"He has the courage of a lion," declared Dr. Reese. "He doesn't know the meaning of the word fear." Understandably, Mrs. Bloom was not holding up as well.

"They should never let police officers marry," she wept. "Service always comes before the family. At least it always did with my husband. The loneliness is awful... and now this."

Close Calls for Shaffer and Ryan

While police focused their search in Schuylkill and Carbon counties, makeshift posses combed the woods of Juniata and Mifflin counties. In reality,  David Shaffer was already hundreds of miles away. On October 26, Sergeant George Pattingill of Detroit was on duty when he spotted a car with a Pennsylvania plate and immediately recognized the driver as Shaffer. Pattingill started in pursuit, but heavy traffic allowed Shaffer to escape. 

Those who believed that David Shaffer might have fled to Detroit with his partner-in-crime were proven wrong when Francis Ryan robbed a Williamsport clothing store on November 1. Although he had told the frightened employees that he was the infamous David Shaffer, he was instantly recognized as the nearly-as-infamous Francis Ryan. The following week, Ryan, again acting alone, held up the night clerk at the Mark Twain Hotel in Elmira. On November 15 it looked like Ryan's luck had run out; he was picked up by a policeman in Warren, Ohio, but broke free from the policeman's grasp while being marched into police headquarters. Interestingly, another Northumberland County fugitive-- car thief, burglar, and prison escapee Harry Kessler-- was captured in Ohio the following afternoon (in an ironic twist, the jail trusty Kessler had assaulted to make his escape was Shaffer and Ryan's pal Scotty Osborn).

By late November, Shaffer and Ryan were still on the loose, but only one of the fugitives was laying low. Ryan's next target was the Necho Allen Hotel in Pottsville. With police hot on his heels, Ryan engaged them in a dramatic gunfight which resulted in one trooper's hospitalization with a shattered hip. When a Williamsport grocery store was robbed a few days later by two armed men, police presented the proprietor with photos of Shaffer and Ryan; much to their amazement, the bandits did not match their description. In a teletype message to the state police, a Williamsport police officer simply wrote: "the bandits were not David Shaffer and Francis Ryan". Afterwards, state police mailed a wanted poster of the two fugitives to every city and town in America with a population of 500 or more.

 

Francis Ryan

 

Shaffer's Luck Runs Out

David Shaffer's lucky streak came to a crashing halt on December 30 when a stolen car in which he was driving collided with a bridge in Benton, Columbia County. Shaffer was unconscious when he was pulled from the badly-wrecked automobile by a local physician, Dr. W.F. Confair. When the fugitive woke up, he found himself in a hospital bed guarded by troopers from the Bloomsburg barracks. "I was near the end of my string," he admitted to his captors, adding that he was glad it was all over. "I couldn't have lived that way much longer," he said. "It was like being a wild animal with all the hunters in the world on the lookout."

Shaffer was shabbily dressed when captured, and revealed to troopers that he had not returned to Pennsylvania since ditching his car in Jersey Shore. Instead, he had been laying low in the Midwest, and had returned for the holidays and was planning on turning himself in on New Year's Day. On the night of the accident he was walking along the highway near Benton when he flagged down a car driven by Henry Rinehimer. When the driver opened the passenger door for Shaffer, he found himself looking into the muzzle of the stranger's pistol. He ordered Rinehimer out of the car and then sped off in the stolen vehicle, hitting a patch of ice and skidding into a bridge abutment. It was a teenager, Bruce Sutliff, who witnessed the crash and raced to the home of Dr. Confair-- the unlikely hero of the saga.

 The actions of Dr. Confair read like something out of a thriller novel; Confair placed the unconscious driver in the passenger seat of his own car, and was shocked to find that the man had an automatic pistol inside his jacket. The safety catch was off, which led the physician to wonder if his patient might be David Shaffer. Once he had Shaffer on his operating table, he bound his wrists and ankles with surgical tape and injected him with a strong sedative. Then he phoned the state police and gave the man's description to Corporal R.C. Frick, who, in turn, called Constable Meeker of Benton and asked him to guard the unconscious man until he got there. Corporal Frick and Trooper Kenneth West soon arrived and identified the man as Shaffer and transported him to Bloomsburg Hospital.

 

Major Lynn Adams shaking hands with Cpl. Bloom in 1936

 

The Trial

There was much debate between armchair lawyers over what charges Shaffer would face. Some argued that since he had been aiming for Corporal Bloom, he could not be charged with first-degree murder in the death of his sister. Others pointed out that Bertha was killed while Shaffer was engaged in the commission of a felony, thereby warranting a first-degree murder charge and a possible death sentence. District Attorney Robert Fortney would ultimately push for a first-degree murder conviction, and he would get it.

One remarkable aspect of the trial was defense attorney Daniel Kearney's closing argument, in which he asserted that Corporal Bloom was an open target and Shaffer had only shot him in "non-vital" areas and had no intention of killing anyone. Stranger still, Kearney pinned the blame for Bertha Shaffer's death on the shooter's girlfriend, Roberta Gessner. "There is one person and only one person who is to blame for the shooting of Corporal William Bloom and the death of Bertha Shaffer, and that person is Roberta Gessner!" he thundered. "That woman has been unfaithful to her husband, unfaithful to her lover, and unfaithful to Bertha Shaffer. Roberta Gessner arranged with the state police to trap David Shaffer and then, by telephone, called Bertha Shaffer to meet her and brought that girl to see her brother captured or killed."

At 7:35 on the evening of February 7, 1936, Judge Herbert W. Cummings directed Deputy Sheriff Lawrence Spriggle to bring Shaffer from the county prison to the courthouse to hear the verdict. Deputy Prothonotary Bert Curnow read the message which had been handed to him: "We find the defendant, David Shaffer, guilty of murder in the first degree and recommend he be sentenced to life imprisonment." Shaffer smiled and turned to look at his sisters who were in attendance, having learned his fate for killing the one sister who wasn't. Carrie Shaffer, David's mother, was not present, as she had suffered a minor heart attack during the trial.

A large crowd was gathered outside as Shaffer, chained and manacled, was taken from the courthouse by state police. "Make way!" shouted one of the troopers.

"Yes, get out of the way boys," quipped Shaffer. "The state police are coming!" While Shaffer was apparently pleased that he had cheated the electric chair, he had to be reminded that Corporal Bloom's life was still in the balance-- if Bloom should die from injuries, Shaffer's goose was as good as cooked.

The End of Francis Ryan

Shaffer began serving his sentence on Valentine's Day of 1936. The fact that his partner-in-crime would spend the rest of his life behind bars did nothing to quench Francis Ryan's thirst for lawlessness, however.  On June 19, 1936, Ryan died in a Pittsburgh hospital after a shootout with police following a car chase. Ryan and another man were driving a stolen automobile when Patrolman James Gramentine attempted to stop them for speeding. After a six-mile chase, Ryan lost control of the vehicle and struck a wall before careening into Gramentine's motorcycle. A footchase ensued. Ryan reached for his pistol after Gramentine ordered him to halt, and was rewarded with four bullets in his body. His body was transported back to Shenandoah and buried in the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church Cemetery.

The Death of David Shaffer

 Fortunately for David Shaffer, Corporal Bloom survived the ordeal; he would eventually finish his career behind a desk at the Pennsylvania State Police Academy in Hershey, and he passed away in 1974 at the age of 73. Carrie May Shaffer, who had the rare distinction of being the mother of both a murderer and a murder victim, also recovered, though she suffered poor health for the rest of her life. She passed away from heart failure at the age of 66 in 1948. The warden of Eastern State Penitentiary permitted David to travel to Shamokin to attend her funeral.

As for David Shaffer, he died in 1952 at the age of 45. Though his obituary in local papers erroneously state that he was residing at 1100 West Lynn Street at the time of his death, this was actually the address of his sister, Dorothy Shaffer Ebright. Shaffer died on June 16, 1952, at Eastern State Penitentiary. 

 

 

Sources:

Shamokin News-Dispatch, April 13, 1925.
Shamokin News-Disptach, Oct. 14, 1935.
Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, Oct. 15, 1935.
Shamokin News-Dispatch, Oct. 17, 1935.
Shamokin News-Dispatch, Oct. 28, 1935.
Shamokin News-Dispatch, Nov. 2, 1935.
Shamokin News-Dispatch, Nov. 26, 1935.
Shamokin News-Dispatch, Dec. 30, 1935.
Shamokin News-Dispatch, Feb. 8, 1936.
Sunbury Daily Item, June 18, 1952.