The Poison Children of Olyphant

 

Vera Becech, one of the poisoning victims.

Located six miles north of Scranton, the borough of Olyphant was a rural farming community until 1858, when Lewis Pughe, Edward Jones and Abel Barker leased five hundred acres of land in Blakely Township upon which anthracite coal had been discovered thirty years earlier. These men reached an agreement with the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company to furnish it with 150,000 tons of coal per year. As the land was developed, a thriving town soon emerged upon the once fertile farmlands, and was named in honor of Robert Morrison Olyphant, president of the Delaware & Hudson Company.
While Olyphant is best known for its role in the coal mining industry, it is also the location of a tragic unsolved mystery from 1902-- the year when several children of the town were fatally poisoned by a person or persons unknown, for reasons what are equally shrouded in mystery. This is the ghastly tale of the poison children of Olyphant.

January of 1902 marked a new chapter in Lackawanna County politics. The November elections resulted in several upsets, and January 6 saw three new faces taking their place in key offices throughout the county. At the county courthouse, Judge Newcomb was introduced as the newest junior member, while M.P. Mitchell moved into the surveyor's office. Meanwhile, a soft-spoken 36-year-old bachelor, James Saltry, began his term as county coroner, replacing Coroner Roberts. 

The Bachelor Coroner

James Saltry may have been a young man, but he was highly-regarded for his skills as a physician and surgeon. A descendant of one of Scranton's pioneer families, Dr. Saltry returned to his hometown after earning his medical degree from the Baltimore College of Physicians and Surgeons and he remained there for the rest of his life. His first foray into politics had been in 1898, when he launched an unsuccessful bid for county coroner. It was an easy victory for the Republican incumbent, Dr. Roberts, who lambasted his rival for being too young and inexperienced for the challenges and rigors of the coroner's office. It wasn't in Dr. Saltry's nature to be bitter, however, and he never had an unkind word to say about Dr. Roberts. Instead, the genial physician returned to his successful practice in the city's Pine Brook neighborhood, assumed the position of jail physician at the Lackawanna County Prison, and tried again in 1901. This time, he would be prove successful, handily beating Roberts by nearly 2,500 votes. Unfortunately for the newly-elected coroner, Saltry had barely gotten himself moved into his office when he was confronted with one of the strangest cases in the history of Lackawanna County.

On Friday, January 10, just four days after assuming office, Coroner Saltry was summoned to Hill Street (which is now E. Lackawanna Avenue) in Olyphant to investigate the deaths of three children of Slovakian coal miner Michael Varga. It was seven-year-old Mary who first fell ill the previous Sunday from symptoms the Varga family physician, Dr. Kranz, believed were caused by arsenic poisoning-- severe abdominal pain, vomiting, cramping and a feeble pulse. The other two Varga children, four-year-old Annie and two-year-old Peter, fell ill with the same symptoms on Thursday morning. Yet, despite the best efforts of their doctor, and Dr. Van Sickle, Mary died in intense agony later that afternoon. By the time Coroner Saltry arrived on Friday, Annie and Peter had joined their sister in death. Saltry performed autopsies on the children and found all of stomachs inflamed. He gave samples of the children's stomachs to a chemist, George Barber, and requested an immediate analysis.

 

More Questions Than Answers

Barber found traces of arsenic in the stomachs of all three victims and Coroner Saltry held an inquest at Prokopovitz Hall in Olyphant on the night of January 14-- his first as county coroner-- to determine if the deaths had been accidental or intentional. As an experienced doctor, Saltry was aware that similar deaths had resulted from children accidentally ingesting rat poison. Other fatal arsenic poisonings had been the result of murder for financial gain, or revenge by a disgruntled domestic servant. Yet, the inquest revealed that the immigrant coal miner and his wife were too poor to afford a housekeeper or life insurance policies for their children. While the coroner's leading theory was that the Varga children had died from swallowing rat poison, testimony from the parents through an interpreter revealed that the Vargas kept no such poisons in their home. They also said that the children had eaten the same food as themselves, and they had not become ill. Suspecting that the children might've fallen prey to an enemy of the Vargas, Coroner Saltry placed the matter into the hands of County Detective Phillips. But the mystery deepened when another child died from what appeared to be the same poison.

On the night of January 14, while the inquest into the deaths of the Varga children was taking place, an infant child of Frank Marusha, a neighbor of the Vargas, died under similar circumstances. As if that wasn't tragic enough, three children of yet another neighbor, John Becech, were at the point of death, suffering from identical symptoms; one of them, Vera Becech, would later die. The Becech family home adjoined that of the Vargas, leading some to wonder if the water supply could've been contaminated. This wasn't likely, however, as the adults drank from the same water source as the children. The coroner was perplexed by the wave of death.

"I can't even suggest a theory," admitted Coroner Saltry. "The case if one of the most puzzling I ever heard of. I shall have a conference with County Detective Phillips tomorrow, because I believe that it is a case which he should carefully investigate."

The Varga home on Hill Street

 
A Frustrated Detective

The mysterious deaths were also brought to the attention of District Attorney Lewis, who believed that the five children had been murdered. Authorities attempted to link the poisonings to enemies of the Varga, Becech and Marusha families, but, as it turned out, there were none. Furthermore, no strangers had been seen in the vicinity where the children had fallen ill, and no drug store clerk had any record of anyone buying arsenic or strychnine, even though all sales of poisonous substances were required be recorded by law. By week's end, County Detective Phillips was just as flummoxed as Coroner Saltry.

"It is the strangest case that I ever saw, and I begin to doubt that there has been any poisoning," said Detective Phillips. "I would certainly adopt such a view of the matter but for the fact that we are utterly unable to account for the death from natural causes of the three Varga children within twenty-four hours of each other. If the children were poisoned as alleged, we will have to wait until time or chance reveals the identity of the poisoners."

County Detective Phillips admitted that he could find no motive, and when asked if the children may have eaten poisoned candy, Phillips told reporters that the families were so poor that candy was a luxury they could not afford. But what if someone had given them the candy? With sweets being such a rarity in the households of the victims, surely they would not have refused candy from a stranger. But, if this was the case, who was the stranger? And what had these innocent children done to deserve such a cruel fate?

The family name appears variously as Varka, Vargo and Wargo, which are all derived from the Slavic "Varga", meaning "Shoemaker".

 

The Case Goes Cold

Sadly, County Detective Phillips and Coroner Saltry were unable to find a single clue in their investigation, and the newly-elected coroner, tasked with investigating any sudden, violent or accidental death, learned first-hand why so many Lackawanna County murders go unsolved: Death never takes a day off in the Coal Region.

 The number of cases Coroner Salter was called upon to investigate during his first thirty days on the job (aside from the Olyphant poisonings) was truly impressive; there were the deaths of miners Hopkin Pickerell and Barney Loftus on January 9, the jail cell death of Herman Albrecht on January 14, the death of miner Frank Wood on January 13, the mutilation-by-train death of Michael Budick, the discovery of the body of missing Scranton resident John Hobbs and the sudden death of Judge William Jessup on January 15, the sudden death of Rosy Maisey and the death of miner Harry Wilcha on January 17, the death of lumber yard worker Stephen Skiliskia on January 18, the sudden death of cigarmaker Thomas Lewis on January 20, the death of John Dougherty after being kicked by a mule on January 23, the sudden death of Hannah Thomas on January 28, the accidental death of construction worker Emilio Colacci on January 29, the suicide of David Williams on January 31, and the deaths of miners John Shofkinski and George Dailey on February 4 and February 7. And all this was done without the assistance of a deputy coroner, which should demonstrate just how difficult it must've been to be a Coal Region coroner back in the old days.

As for James Saltry, he would go on to serve a second term as Lackawanna County coroner before returning to private practice. He never married. His career as a practicing physician, surgeon and public official spanned thirty-three years before his untimely death at the age of 59. He passed away at his home at 847 Capouse Avenue on January 7, 1926, after a brief illness.

Sources:

Scranton Times-Tribune, Jan. 11, 1902.
Scranton Tribune, Jan. 13, 1902.
Scranton Times-Tribune, Jan. 15, 1902.
Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 18, 1902.
Scranton Tribune, Jan. 8, 1926