The Death of Clara Hogendobler: Mercy Killing or Murder?

John Henry Hogendobler

 

On Tuesday, April 8, 1941, John Henry Hogendobler left his ramshackle home in Lower Augusta Township and walked to Sunbury. He stopped at a drugstore to buy cough syrup for his wife, Clara, who suffered from asthma. The 50-year-old farmer also purchased an almanac, because his wife had wanted one, and then proceeded to the public assistance office. Hogendobler, clad in the mismatched and threadbare costume of poverty, was a familiar but pitiable sight around the city; on that particular day, he was wearing his best outfit: old trousers about ten inches too large at the waist, a khaki shirt in deperate need of washing, and a tattered gray slouch hat that looked like a relic from the Battle of Gettysburg. Though described as "feeble-minded", John Hogendobler was known to be a kind-hearted fellow, the type of harmless charity case who had been down on his luck since the day he was born.

After finishing his business at the public assistance office, Hogendobler got a haircut and a shave at the Bickel & Mitchell barbershop and was ambling along the sidewalk when he ran into a cousin, Walter Kalb. Kalb greeted him cordially and asked about Clara. 

"She's got a cough," said Hogendobler, "and I bought her some medicine while I was getting other things for the house." Kalb, whose cash handouts had aided the Hogendoblers several times over the years, noticed that his cousin was carrying a half-empty burlap bag on his back. This time, the assistance office had refused to provide John with a relief check, and the groceries inside the sack would provide the bare essentials for survival for only a few days, or perhaps a week at most.

"Can I buy you some tobacco, John?" asked Kalb.

"No, I don't want any," replied Hogendobler.

"Well, how about a lift home?" The poverty-stricken farmer accepted the offer and they drove south on Front Street, past the Sunbury Poor House. At the crest of the hill past the poor house they turned onto the steep gravel road leading to the Hogendobler farm. John left the car and entered the house-- which was hardly more than a shanty-- and ran out a moment later in a bewildered state.

"Clara's been shot and she's dead!" he shouted. Kalb ran into the house and followed Hogendobler up the narrow stairs. Inside the bedroom, Clara was lying in bed, flat on her back. An antique .22-caliber Stevens rifle was on the bed beside her. The dead woman's hands were under the covers, which struck Walter Kalb as suspicious, and he raced to the Shipman home at the foot of the hill and telephoned the coroner, Dr. Sidney Kallaway, at his office in Shamokin. He also called funeral director Earl Wirt.

The Coroner Arrives

Coroner Kalloway left Shamokin at once, and was met at the Shipman house by Kalb and Hogendobler, who explained that Clara had gone back to bed after breakfast, before he left for Sunbury. He insisted that his wife had taken her own life. The cause of death, Kalloway noted, was a gunshot wound behind the right ear. There were no bloodstains, no powder marks.

"The house was indescribably dirty," the coroner later stated. "The Christmas tree was still in the living room, trimmed with scraps of paper. It looked as though everything they got in the last twenty-five years was still in the house." Coroner Kalloway returned to Shamokin and notified that state police. Corporal J.E. Hochreiter went to the house to investigate, reaching the Hogendobler farm around two o'clock. Lloyd Beck, an employee of Undertaker Wirt, was already there when he arrived, along with County Detective Zimmerman and Sergeant Elbert Lantz of the State Motor Police, who had been in the vicinity investigating a fatal hit-and-run. Detective Zimmerman drove John Hogendobler to the Wirt Funeral Home. Inside the car, the feeble-minded farmer made a chilling-- and bizarre-- admission.

Cough Syrup for a Corpse

"I shot her after we got up, about five minutes after five o'clock," said John Hogendobler. "I wanted to put her out of her misery because she had the asthma and was sick. Later on, I walked to Sunbury to buy her some cough medicine and get some groceries." Zimmerman relayed this story to the district attorney, Robert M. Fortney, who refused to take a statement from Hogendobler because he believed that he was insane. After all, who but an insane person would run errands for a wife he had already killed? 

Because of Hogendobler's mental state and the rowdy nature of the jails in Sunbury and Shamokin, police transported Hogendobler to the Kulpmont jail, where he was interviewed by local physicians. All of them concluded that John Hogendobler was delusional and most likely unfit to stand trial for his wife's murder. District Attorney Fortney went before the Northumberland County court to request the appointment of a lunacy commission.

The Ballad of John and Clara

The story of the Hogendoblers is a tale of tragedy. John's mother died when he was fifteen and his father, Henry, went west when Oklahoma was opened for settlement and hadn't been heard from since. John quit school and went to work on the farm of Frank Keller in Klinesgrove. He was regarded as an honest and hard worker. In 1925, John married Clara Cressinger, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Cressinger of Lower Augusta Township. They inherited the farm after Samuel Cressinger's death. Two children were born to the Hogendoblers, but were taken by county authorities and put up for adoption.

Eight years after their marriage, Clara's mother was killed in a gruesome manner, one of her legs being torn from her body in a runaway wagon accident. Clara, is was said, had never developed mentally after the death of her mother; as she matured physically, her mind remained that of a child. During the Depression she was sent to Danville State Hospital for treatment but was sent home a year later by physicians who claimed that her case wasn't severe enough to warrant further hospitalization.

At first, the Hogendoblers kept their home and tiny farm in good shape, but, as time went on, John seemed to grow mentally confused. The fields became overgrown with weeds, the chores were abandoned. Clara, who had developed asthma, spent most of her time sitting in a chair. Nobody ever came to visit, or to check on them, and the house grew filthier with each passing year. Unable to do anything for themselves, the Hogendoblers became afflicted with helplessness. After their pump broke, the couple lived without water for several weeks until concerned neighbors chipped in $30 to have it repaired. They had no means of transportation other than their own feet, and were unable to afford the feed to keep their cows and chickens alive. Once, a Department of Agriculture inspector came to the farm to take away the dying animals, but was so horrified by the couple's living conditions that he pulled out his wallet and gave the Hogendoblers money out of his own pocket to buy animal feed.

 Others opened their wallets just the same, but the Hogendoblers were never able to get back on their feet, not even when salvation seemed to be within their reach. During the winter of 1940, John was offered a steady job in the coal mines in Lykens, but Clara refused to let him go. She had become so dependent upon her husband, and so incapable of caring for herself, that the thought of being home alone was unbearable. But was there a possibility that John Hogendobler had other motives for killing his 47-year-old wife?

Put Her Out of Her Misery

On Wednesday morning, April 9, Hogendobler was taken back to his house, where he re-enacted the crime before State Motor Police investigators and made a full confession to Officer A.P. Baceski of the Shamokin detail. He insisted that he killed Clara for money-- the $1.36 she kept in a tin box in the kitchen.

"I was mad at her because she wouldn't give up the deed to the farm so that we could get relief," he told Officer Baceski. "I put on my overalls, walked over to the window and looked out," he explained. "Then I came back and stood at the side of the bed and I decided I'd shoot my woman. I wasn't mad at her one bit. I wanted to get her out of her misery, and it just came to my mind all at once and that's what I did." 

According to Hogendobler, after he shot his wife he went into the kitchen and "fried some potatoes" for breakfast, before taking the money out of the tin and walking eight miles to Sunbury. But when the police attempted to take the thirty-six cents in change which he had left over as evidence, Hogendobler grew violent, claiming that it was the first time he had money in five years.

Later that afternoon John Hogendobler was arraigned before Alderman Clyde M. Smith and committed to the Northumberland County Prison. District Attorney Fortney discouraged him from making any further statements or entering a plea, declaring that the farmer was "obviously not accountable" for his actions and that "he would sign any kind of statement put before him."

Never Heard of Electric Chair

Proof of just how far removed the Hogendoblers were from reality was seen during the re-enactment of the crime. After police warned Hogendobler that he might get the electric chair for what he had done, Hogendobler was confused. Although the electric chair has been the official method of execution in Pennsylvania since 1913, the farmer said that the electric chair was "a gadget I don't know nothin' about." Only when Hogendobler reached the prison and asked Warden Fred McCall about it was he convinced of its existence.

Clara Hogendobler was buried in the Sunbury Cemetery on the morning of April 11. It was reported that very few people were in attendance as Reverend Crosser officiated the graveside service. Rev. Crosser, pastor of the Augustaville Holiness Church, spoke of how the Hogendoblers had faithfully attended church services, walking four miles to the church and home again, even during the recent March blizzard.

 
Sympathy for the Slayer

As it turned out, there was no need for John Hogendobler to fear the electric chair, as it was obvious to everyone that he was deranged. Strangely, the public began showing more sympathy for Hogendobler as a murderer than they had when he was a law-abiding citizen trying to scrape by. Part of this sympathy was a consequence of several controversial decisions made by the state's Department of Public Assistance in the weeks and months leading up to Clara's "mercy killing". At the time of the tragedy in Lower Augusta Township, there was a movement in Harrisburg to have the salaries of DPA workers increased to a minimum of $1,200 per year-- more than twice the annual salary of the highest-paid laborer or construction worker who received his job through the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Pennsylvania lawmakers planned to fund this raise by chiseling away relief grants intended for the poorest of the poor. By April of 1941, WPA workers and their families were already beginning to lose their supplemental relief grants.

Naturally, when newspapers reported that John Hogendobler had applied for, and had been denied, a relief check and was living on the threshold of starvation, a great deal of outrage was directed toward state legislators. One scathing letter, directed at the DPA, was published by the Sunbury Daily Item on April 15 It read, in part:

This politically appointed dictatorship, whom no one voted for and no one had any opportunity to vote for, who try to govern matters that they do not understand for their own interest, naively believe that their clients are like the cow that everyone wanted to milk but no one wanted to feed. Their main interest seems only to be to get for themselves the lion's share of all money appropriated for the poor and unfortunate... If the DPA had done their duty to the Hogendobler family of Lower Augusta, it is more than likely that their tragedy might have been averted.

Hogendobler's Examination

On April 17, Judge Charles Morganroth appointed two young and up-an-coming attorneys, Louis Cohen and J. Donald Steele, to represent John Hogendobler. Meanwhile, District Attorney Fortney compelled Dr. Peter Kwiterovich, clinical director at the Danville State Hospital, to examine Hogendobler at the county jail. After examining Hogendobler for two hours, Dr. Kwiterovich filed a nine-page report declaring that the 50-year-old man had the mentality of a seven-year-old child. Kwiterovich had also given Hogendobler an intelligence test, and found that he had an I.Q. of 52. 

One sad footnote in this story concerns a jailhouse conversation between John Hogendobler and his attorney, J. Donald Steele, who visited his client a few days after Dr. Kwiterovich's examination. Hogendobler didn't seem to mind being in jail, but on the day of this visit the attorney found his client to be in a brooding, melancholy mood. "Why doesn't my wife come to see me?" asked Hogendobler.

"Why, John, you murdered her," replied Steele. "Don't you remember?"

"Yes, but that was two weeks ago," said Hogendobler.

Fortney Plays Hardball

The Northumberland County Grand Jury indicted John Hogendobler for murder and his trial was set to begin on May 5, 1941. District Attorney Fortney said that he would not seek a first-degree murder verdict Hogendobler's attorneys, however, stated that they were pushing for a full acquittal and that their client would enter a plea of not guilty on grounds of insanity.

This all-or-nothing decision by the brash, young defense attorneys angered District Attorney Fortney, whose job it was to secure a conviction. Since there was a high probability of acquittal, Fortney decided pull out all the stops and play hardball. In his opening statement he told the jury that John Hogendobler was perfectly sane and knew the difference between right and wrong, and that the defendant might have to pay the "supreme penalty" for committing a capital offense. Steele and Cohen's strategy backfired; on May 6, the jury found Hogendobler guilty of murder in the first degree and recommended a sentence of life imprisonment. However, it would be up to Judge Morganroth to decide whether that sentence would be served at a state prison or a mental hospital.

No Mercy From Morganroth

Despite overwhelming evidence that John Hogendobler had the intellect and reasoning skills of a young child, Judge Morganroth showed the accused killer no leniency whatsoever. "John Hogendobler, the jury found you guilty of murder in the first degree, recommending life imprisonment," announced Judge Morganroth on May 12. "I, therefore, sentence you to serve the rest of your natural life at separate and solitary confinement and hard labor in the Eastern Penitentiary." Next to death in the electric chair, this was the harshest sentence the judge could impose.

To add insult to injury, defense attorneys Steele and Cohen said that they would not file a motion for a new trial, nor would they make any move to have a lunacy commission appointed once Hogendobler was admitted to Eastern Penitentiary. "Why? He's sane," said Louis Cohen to reporters who were still taken aback by the unfortunate turn of events. Though John Hogendobler was indeed guilty of murder, many people believed that he had gotten a raw deal-- by the Department of Public Assistance, by Northumberland County officials, by his own attorneys, and by life in general.

Sources:

Sunbury Daily Item, April 9, 1941.
Sunbury Daily Item, April 10, 1941.
Sunbury Daily Item, April 11, 1941.
Sunbury Daily Item, April 15, 1941.
Sunbiry Daily Item, April 17, 1941.
Sunbury Daily Item, April 25, 1941.
Sunbury Daily Item, April 29, 1941.
Shamokin News-Dispatch, April 30, 1941.
Shamokin News-Dispatch, May 7, 1941.
Sunbury Daily Item, May 12, 1941.