Montgomery County PA News - Crimes
Republican Compiler (Gettysburg, Pennsylvania)
July 28, 1824
The trial of Mrs. Richardson, before Judge Robbins, in the Montgomery circuit court, took place at its late term. She was charged with shooting her husband and found guilty by the jury of manslaughter, and sentenced to the penitentiary for two years and eight months.
Republican Compiler (Gettysburg, Pennsylvania)
September 8, 1824
Union, Pa. Aug 24.
Supposed Murder
On Wednesday last the body of an infant child was found in a Privy in Bridgeport, in this county. On an examination of the body, it appeared that it had received a severe blow on its head, which is supposed to have occasioned its death. Suspicion was immediately fixed on a young girl of the name of Milly Tapp of Bridgeport, of being the mother and murderer of the child, and on examination sufficient indications presented to strengthen the suspicion, and on Saturday she was committed to jail to await her trial at October term. It is not a little surprising, that we should have two women to be tried at our next court for the crime of murder, one for the murder of her own child, and the other of her husband. - Genius of Liberty.
The Indiana Democrat (Indiana, Pennsylvania)
February 28 1878
Suicide In A Cell
A Prisoner Convicted of Murder Found Dead
Norristown, Pa., February 23
The body of Heinrich Wahlen, convicted of the murder of Max Hugo Hoehne, near the Grangers Encampment, Elm station, in the fall of 1876,(1877) was found this evening in his cell with his skull broken and hanging to the bar of the window with a rope made from bed clothes. It is supposed he first fastened the rope around his neck and then beat his head with an iron covering of the heater, which was broken off and covered with blood. Wahlen left statements in French, German and English, declaring his innocence and calling on God to heap his curses on all persons in any way connected with his trial and conviction.
The crime for which the deceased was to suffer the penalty of hanging, in the event that the application for a new trial pending in the Supreme Court should be denied against him, was commonly known as the Elm Station or Granger Encampment mystery. On the 2d day of February 1877, a dead body was found in an advanced state of decomposition and wasted to a skeleton, lying in a unfrequented but accessible place near the temporary hostelry known as the Granger Encampement, and not far from Elm Station in Montgomery county. It was generally supposed that the murdered man was one of the many who came to Philadelphia unknown and unaccompanied during the Centennial, and that he had fallen among thieves and been murdered. After waiting a long while for identification of the remains, the Coroner concluded it was a hopeless case, and had them interred at the public expense.
Not until six months passed was evidence accumulated going to show that the deceased was Max Hugo Hoehne, with no friends in this city, who was last seen in company with one Heinrich Wahlen. It appeared on further inquiry, that Wahlen had taken Hoehne's name and gone to Hoehne's uncle in New York and secured a little property that he had left. The detectives found him in the Brooklyn penitentiary, serving a sentence for some other crime, probably burglary, and still under the name of Hoehne, his dead friend. He had corresponded with the latter's parents in the old county, and letters from or to them were found in his possession. He confessed that his name was Wahlen, gave unsatisfactory reasons for taking Hoehne's name, and for parting with him. Brought to Norristown, he was tried and convicted of murder in the first degree on circumstantial evidence of unusual strength combined with the direct testimony of a half witted fellow named Strabalski, who professed to have seen Wahlen kill Hoehne with a hammer and then hide the body.
Hoehne's father in Germany first hard of the murder through a paragraph in the German Democrat, of this city, which described the clothing on the corpse. This clothing corresponded with that worn by his son, from whom he had not heard since his arrival in New York. After Wahlen's arrest he came over and duly identified the remains. Wahlen throughout his imprisonment protested his innocence, and there are many who believe him. The prison physician has long suspected his intention to commit suicide, and notified the prison authorities, who put a watchman in his cell in the daytime, but not at night. His supper was handed to him at a quarter past five o'clock, and at a quarter past six o'clock his dead body was discovered.