The Schaffner Case: Ghoul at the Grave

The grave of Nancy Good Schaffner at Union Deposit Cemetery

 

Emanuel Schaffner was a farmer who owned a small tract of land about ten miles from Harrisburg in South Hanover Township. Middle aged and short of stature, Schaffner was neither particularly bright in intellect or particularly handsome in appearance. In fact, some said he was a downright repulsive and repugnant little man-- and that was before Emanuel Schaffner, who was sent to prison in 1872, earned his reputation as one of the most despicable villains Dauphin County has ever seen.

Emanuel and his wife, Sarah, were married in 1850. But, after nearly twenty years, their routine had become predictable, their lives monotonous. That all changed when they hired a servant girl named Susan Cassel. It wasn't long before rumors began to spread; Emanuel and Susan were seen riding together in Emanuel's carriage and disappearing together inside the Schaffner barn for long periods of time. Emanuel laughed at the rumors; why should a young, pretty girl like Susan Cassel be infatuated with him? Susan laughed at the rumors, too. She had a suitor-- a young man named John Sharlach who was employed at the Baldwin Locomotive Works. Susan and the Schaffners were regular attendees at church revivals and camp meetings in Lebanon County, where Emanuel had been born and raised, and surely nothing unsavory could be taking place under the roof of such an upstanding Christian household. Or could it?

On September 1, 1869, Sarah Schaffner fell ill and died three days later at the age of 42. She was buried at Union Deposit Cemetery. Although Emanuel had his own name etched into the gravemarker he had bought for his deceased wife, it wasn't long before he re-married. In June of 1870, Nancy Good became his second wife. However, rumors again began to circulate. Nancy was nearly ten years older than Emanuel and came from a respectable family with a considerable amount of money. Though he never admitted it publicly, Emanuel confided to his close friends that his reasons for marrying Nancy Good were strictly financial. He had told Daniel Seltzer, the brother of Emanuel's first wife, that he wasn't attracted to Nancy and Emanuel hoped that, by marrying her, some of his debts would be paid off.

It was around this time that Susan Cassel and John Sharlach were married. They were wed on August 13, 1870, though Susan continued to live at the Schaffner farm. Susan convinced her new husband to take out a $2,000 life insurance policy from an agent from Annville named Martin Seabold. The policy, which went into effect on November 11, named Susan as beneficiary. 

The Death of John Sharlack

In February of 1871, John Sharlach visited his wife at the Schaffner farm. This would prove to be a fatal mistake. Sharlack fell violently ill, and died on February 17 after several days of intense agony. According to Emanuel Schaffner, his guest did not want to see a doctor, so he gave him "medicine" which he kept in a bottle. Sharlock's condition had worsened and he begged his wife to call Dr. John Smith. Under Dr. Smith's care, his health improved slightly. Smith left the farm, and when he returned a few days later he found that his patient had died. Dr. Smith found Sharlach's body in a contorted, twisted position, with the toes curled in different directions. He suspected arsenic poisoning, but kept his suspicions to himself. Not surprisingly, two days after Sharlach's funeral in Hummelstown, Emanuel Schaffner paid a visit to Martin Seabold. 

"Schaffner said that Sharlock had died from excessive drinking and other dissipated habits, that he had engaged in fights in Harrisburg," stated Seabold. "I told him that I doubted whether the company would pay the insurance if that was the case." Seabold sent proof of John Sharlock's death to the insurance company's general agent, Mr. Freer, in Columbia, who returned the paperwork. After repeated attempts, Seabold finally persuaded Freer to pay out the claim. He told Susan and Emanuel to meet him at the Lebanon Valley Hotel on May 5, where he gave Susan $2,000 in cash. Seabold grew suspicious after Susan handed the money to Emanuel, who put it in his pocket.

In the days following the insurance payout, Emanuel Schaffner paid off Sharlach's debts with the cash Susan had given him. He also told Susan's brother-in-law, Martin Sharlack, that he would settle John's estate himself. Martin did not like this idea one bit, and he went to the registrar's office in Harrisburg to take out the necessary letters of administration-- only to find that Emanuel Schaffner had beaten him to it. At the registrar's office, Martin confronted Emanuel, who told the clerk that Martin Sharlach had persuaded him to act as the administrator of his brother's estate. "I did no such thing!" protested Martin. The argument was settled when Martin reluctantly agreed to become a co-administrator. Although Emanuel seemed happy with this arrangement, Martin warned him that he wouldn't smile if he knew the true state of his dead brother's finances. After realizing that he wouldn't profit from John Sharlach's meager estate, Emanuel's mood changed entirely.

A Wife Doomed

It's not known whether Nancy Schaffner had suspicions about her new husband, but it is known that she resisted Emanuel's efforts to have her life insured. In addition, Emanuel frequently asked Nancy for money but was often refused, which caused no shortage of friction at home. Nancy also didn't approve of Susan living under their roof, and after Sharlach's death, she forced the young widow out of the home. This seems to suggest that Nancy was at least aware of the intimacy between Susan and Emanuel. But did she ever believe that her husband was directly responsible for the deaths of the first Mrs. Schaffner and John Sharlach? If so, why did she choose to stay? Did she ever get the feeling that she was doomed to suffer a similar fate?

By the time of Sharlach's burial, more than a handful of people began to suspect Emanuel, though none were so bold as to make a formal accusation. It wasn't until the third untimely death inside the Schaffner home that authorities decided to investigate. 

On June 5, 1871, Nancy fell suddenly ill while doing laundry and Dr. Smith was summoned by Emanuel Schaffner three days later. The doctor arrived on June 8 and found Nancy in bed. He found her pulse weak, the tendons and muscles of her body twitching and convulsing. Her symptoms had been stomach pain and violent vomiting, difficulty swallowing, and intense thirst. "She trembled like the leaf of a tree in a soft breeze," stated Dr. Smith. "In a short time she fainted. " Dr. Smith returned the next day and found her condition unchanged, though she complained of burning in her mouth and stomach. By the following day, she stopped vomiting and was noticeably weaker, and Dr. Smith noticed that the medicine had had brought the previous day appeared unused. Though she exhibited the hallmark symptoms of arsenic poisoning, Dr. Smith diagnosed her illness as cholera.

At eleven o'clock on Sunday evening, June 11, Nancy died after six days of unimaginable agony. She was 54 years old. The funeral was held on Thursday, after which several neighbors and relatives came to the Schaffner house to express their condolences. To their surprise, they found that Susan Sharlach had already moved herself back into the home. Maria Nisley (Emanuel Schaffner's sister) was downstairs clearing the clutter out of the home when she found a packet with a poison label atop the cupboard. Susan took the packet and handed it to Emanuel, who claimed that he had never seen it before. He then threw the packet in the fire.

Ghoul at the Grave

With three deaths having occurred in the Schaffner home in a span of just twenty-two months, Coroner James Porter decided to have the body of Nancy Good Schaffner exhumed from Union Deposit Cemetery. On September 30, Coroner Porter, accompanied by Judge Mumma, Dr. John K. Smith, Martin and Michael Good, Dr. A.C. Reninger and Emanuel Schaffner, traveled to the cemetery, where he made a horrifying discovery-- someone had already opened the grave and tampered with the corpse. It seemed that Schaffner, fearing that he would be blamed for poisoning Nancy, had sneaked into the graveyard under the cover of darkness, dug up the body of his dead wife and thrust his hand into the rotted face of the corpse just to satisfy himself that her remains were so far decayed that nothing incriminating could be found. 

"The face was not recognizable but the general features," Dr. Smith later testified. "The face was black and very much decayed, the lower and upper extremities pretty well preserved... The abdominal cavity was opened... I noticed the appearance of the body; the abdominal walls were dotted over with yellow specks and contained on the right side a yellowish fluid. I took out the stomach with the intestines and a portion of the liver and lungs. The particles were put into a jar, which I assisted in sealing." The graveside autopsy performed by Dr. Reninger and Dr. Smith provided clues that Nancy's death might've been caused by poison, but further tests needed to be made.

Dr. Reninger took the gallon jar to Philadelphia and gave it to Prof. John J. Reese, for chemical analysis. In terms of expertise, a better choice could not have been made; Reese, who was the professor of toxicology at the University of Pennsylvania, had also served as a professor of chemistry (a position he held for ten years). Reese immediately noticed the strange color of the organs and the absence of the smell of putrefication normally observed in persons who have died from natural causes. He detected the presence of arsenic in every organ sample he tested except for the lungs, and estimated that two and a half grains of arsenic were inside the dead woman's stomach-- a lethal amount of poison. 

Next came the exhumation of the body of John Sharlach. It was Dr. Charles Von Tagen, assisted by Dr. J.C. Wiestling, who performed the autopsy on Sharlach on October 17 inside the cemetery toolshed. Just as in the case of Nancy Good Schaffner, the organs were found to be abnormally well preserved and speckled with yellow spots, and there was no stench of putrefication. Von Tagen sealed the organ samples in a kiln-glazed stone jar and gave it to the coroner, who delivered it to Professor Lemuel Stevens of Girard College in Philadelphia. Stevens estimated that Sharlach's liver contained over two grains of arsenic, with a substantial amount of arsenic found in the stomach, pancreas and spleen. Similar tests were performed on the organ samples obtained from Emanuel's first wife, Sarah Schaffner, who was exhumed on October 30. These contained the most arsenic of all.

 

John Sharlach's grave at Hummelstown Cemetery

 

The Arrest of Emanuel and Susan

Emanuel Schaffner was arrested on October 18, 1871, by Lieutenant Hoopes and Officer Brown and taken to jail to await trial on the charge of murdering his second wife, Nancy. He waived his preliminary hearing.  A few days later, District Attorney Joshua Wiestling received the report of Professor Stevens' chemical analysis from Philadelphia. On the afternoon of November 20, Hoopes and Officer Harry Becker went to the residence of George Cassel, about two miles south of Rutherford's Station, and arrested his daughter, Susan Sharlack, on a warrant issued by Mayor Verbeke charging her with aiding and abetting in the poisoning of her husband. Three weeks later, in response to a petition by George Cassel, Judge John J. Pearson granted a writ of habeas corpus and set Susan's bail at $3,000. It was Susan's uncle, David Cassel, who entered bail for her appearance at the next term of court. 

The Trial

The Schaffner murder trial was slated for the first Monday of March, 1872. The prosecution consisted of District Attorney Wiestling, S.H. Alleman, Frank Seltzer and Wayne McVeigh. Defending Schaffner were attorneys Robert Lamberton and Hamilton Alricks. Jury selection began on March 4, which was no easy task, as several potential jurors asked to be excused because they had already made up their minds about the case and questioned their own ability to be fair and impartial. Judge Pearson instructed the accused murderer to enter his plea. Emanuel Schaffner proclaimed, in a firm voice, "Not guilty."

Over the next eight days, dozens of witnesses were called and the scandalous relationship between Emanuel and Susan Sharlach was laid bare. The prosecution clearly and expertly presented the chemical analysis performed by Professor Reese leaving no doubt in the mind of the jury that Schaffner had poisoned Nancy for the purpose of financial gain. The defense, on the other hand, seemed to grasp at straws, having argued at various times over the course of the trial that Nancy's death had resulted from cholera as well as from suicide stemming from jealousy over her husband's relationship with Susan. However, it was the gruesome accusation that Schaffner had tampered with the corpse which compelled the jury, on the afternoon of March 12, to find him guilty of murder in the first degree. On March 29, a sentence of death by hanging was pronounced by Judge Pearson. Schaffner received his sentence without exhibiting the slightest emotion. 

Schaffner Gets New Trial

Emanuel Schaffner's attorneys promptly appealed the conviction to the state Supreme Court claiming that substantial errors had been made. The attorneys argued that since Schaffner was being tried only for the murder of his second wife Nancy Good, that every mention of the deaths of John Sharlach and Sarah Schaffner tainted the jury's judgment. The writ of error argument was heard by the court in May and a decision was reached in early July reversing the lower court's decision and granting Schaffner a new trial, which would take place in October.

The second trial got under way on Monday, October 14. This time, Emanuel Schaffner decided not to take any chances and promptly entered a plea of guilty to a charge of second degree murder for the fatal poisoning of each of his three victims. This decision would effectively result in a life sentence for the middle-aged farmer, but it would spare him from the gallows. In passing sentence, Judge Pearson addressed the defendant:

"Emanuel Schaffner, you have put in the plea of 'guilty of murder in the second degree' to three indictments, and although you were indicted for murder in the first degree, and were no doubt guilty, we have concluded to accept the pleas... The sentence of the court is, on the indictment for the murder of Nancy Schaffner, that you be imprisoned in the Eastern Penitentiary at Philadelphia, for a period of twelve years. 

"On the indictment for the murder of John Sharlach, that you be imprisoned in the Eastern Penitentiary at Philadelphia for twelve years, to be computed from the expiration of sentence in the last case. On the indictment for the murder of Sarah Schaffner, that you be imprisoned in the Eastern Penitentiary at Philadelphia for twelve years, to be computed from the expiration of sentence in the second case."

Nevertheless, the manner in which Emanuel Schaffner escaped the gallows inspired tremendous outrage across Dauphin County. Throughout history, so many brilliant poisoners had paid for their crimes with their lives, either at the end of a rope or by the blade of a guillotine, while an unsophisticated, ham-fisted rube like Schaffner avoided capital punishment. Local newspapers were astonished by the killer's sentence. The Harrisburg Patriot wrote:

In the hands of Schaffner. murder so far from being a fine art was a most bungling and brutal piece of journey work. By the side of such artists as Thomas Griffiths Wainwright, Mrs. Sherman and other noted poisoners, he is a most stupid and clumsy murderer. Yet, in spite of the clumsiness and cruelty of his crimes, he succeeds in evading the gallows by a most extraordinary operation of legal chicanery.

The press also held nothing back when writing about Susan Sharlock, with the Harrisburg Patriot referring to her as Schaffner's "sluttish paramour"-- which was quite an insult back in those days.
On the morning of Friday, October 18, Sheriff Heikel and city treasurer Grafton Fox left for Philadelphia on the Pacific Express with Emanuel Schaffner. A large crowd gathered in front of the jail to get a look at the prisoner. They followed the handcuffed murderer as he was marched down Third Street to Market Street, then from Market Street to the train depot. Schaffner paid no attention to the jeers and insults of the crowd. As he stepped onto the platform he turned and said to the onlookers, "Goodbye, I am going to leave you now. I guess it is all for the best."

An Additional Victim?

Following Schaffner's sentencing, there arose a popular rumor that there may have been more than three victims. It was reported that, during the Civil War, a young man had lived with the Schaffners as a farmhand. When the federal government began to pay enlistment bonuses to soldiers, Emanuel told the youth that he would hold onto the $400 bonus for safekeeping. The farmhand returned at the end of the war but died suddenly two weeks later from a stomach ailment. Emanuel Schaffner, of course, got to keep the money, and no one suspected a thing-- at least not for nearly a decade.

Karma Comes Calling

Whether or not Schaffner had anything to do with the untimely death of his young farmhand is a mystery, and Emanuel went to his death without speaking of the matter. He died on July 12, 1876, at the age of 51, having served just under four years of his sentence, from an illness described only as a "pulmonary complaint which carried him off with extraordinary rapidity". No one came forward to claim his body, and he was buried in an unmarked grave at potter's field.

It seems that whatever became of Susan Cassel Sharlach is also a mystery. There are over five hundred Cassels buried in Dauphin County, including over 200 Cassels buried at Hummelstown Cemetery alone. There is no record of her conviction, which seems to indicate that she was acquitted as an accessory to murder.

 

Sources:

New Bloomfield Times, Nov. 28, 1871.
Harrisburg Telegraph, Dec. 8, 1871.
Harrisburg Telegraph, March 4, 1872.
Harrisburg Telegraph, March 5, 1872.
Harrisburg Telegraph, March 6, 1872.
Harrisburg Telegraph, March 7, 1872.
Harrisburg Telegraph, March 9, 1872.
Harrisburg Telegraph, March 12, 1872.
Harrisburg Telegraph, July 5, 1872.
Harrisburg Telegraph, Oct. 14, 1872.
Harrisburg Telegraph, Oct. 18, 1872.
Newville Star of the Valley, Oct. 29, 1872.
Harrisburg Telegraph, Aug. 7, 1876.