In 1862, the residents of Providence Township in Lackawanna County decided to establish a poor farm for those who were impoverished, handicapped, elderly, and otherwise unable to work and care for themselves. As the population of Lackawanna County grew, the facility, which was then known as the Hillside Home, also provided housing and treatment for the mentally ill. In 1943, the name was changed to the Clarks Summit State Hospital, which continues to operate to this day.
As with any asylum with such a long history, the Hillside Home has seen some dark moments, but none so tragic as the brutal murder of two female inmates in the summer of 1906 by a deranged mute named Ignatz Krewzyk.
The Hillside Home Murders
Ignatz Krewzyk was 28 years old when he was committed to the asylum by Poor Director Frank J. Dickert in 1899 for wandering the city of Scranton in a delirious state. Though he was was penniless, unable to speak, and afflicted with deafness and depression, Krewzyk (some reports spell his surname as Krawczyk or Krewzyp) had never exhibited any signs of violence. As the years went on, he earned the trust of staff members and eventually became something of a jack-of-all-trades around the institution, serving at various times as a handyman, barber, mechanic and kitchen helper. Because of his good conduct, Krewzyk was granted a considerable amount of liberty at the Hillside Home and was considered a harmless sort of fellow.
So, then, it was no cause for alarm when Ignatz Krewzyk appeared at the dispensary door at the asylum's infirmary on the afternoon of Wednesday, July 18, 1906. Dr. M.J. Ruddy, an intern under the direction of resident physician Dr. William Lynch, was busy receiving patients and treating their illnesses and injuries. When the intern's back was turned, Krewzyk reached inside his medical bag. Perhaps its was the gleam of the surgical implements which had aroused his curiosity, or perhaps the inmate had been biding his time to carry out a premeditated act, but, for whatever reason, Krewzyk decided to steal a 12-inch amputation knife from the doctor's bag and leave the infirmary without attracting anyone's attention.
It took only a moment for Dr. Ruddy to realize that his knife was missing, however, and the intern followed Krewzyk into a corridor. The inmate, upon realizing that he was being followed, suddenly grew aggressive; brandishing the weapon in his hand, he ran to the administrative office across the hall where the superintendent's daughter, Miss Josephine Beemer, was chatting with Catherine Heckle, the neice of Director A.W. Paine. Catherine and Josephine fled from the office screaming when the inmate entered the room. They sprinted down the corridor, with Ignatz Krewzyk hot on their heels.
The screaming of the young women attracted a keeper named Richard Davis, as well as Lieutenant George Paine, who was Catherine's cousin and a West Point cadet, and Josephine's brother, Floyd Beemer. Paine and Beemer, along with Davis and Dr. Ruddy, were able to corner the madman in one of the offices. With rare courage, Davis slowly approached the knife-weilding inmate and convinced him to take a seat. With an outstretched hand, he calmly made his way to Krewzyk, and the inmate showed signs of cooperation. But then, in an instant, Krewzyk's face flashed with rage. He lunged at Davis, thrusting the weapon into the keeper's torso, penetrating the lung and intestine.
As Davis fell to the floor, the sight of the blood only served to arouse the mute maniac. He raised the knife and was poised to strike his victim again, but Floyd Beemer swung a wooden chair into the back of Krewzyk's skull with such force that it broke the chair's leg-- though it did not seem to faze the attacker. Paine and Beemer ran out of the room in search of a heavier weapon, but Krewzyk seized the opportunity to escape. The men raced after the inmate, following him up the stairs to the second floor.
Slaughter in the Sewing Room
On the second floor of the Hillside Home was the sewing room. It was here where Ignatz Krewzyk encountered two of the female inmates, 53-year-old Annie Golden and 66-year-old Missouria Ann Van Valen. They had probably greeted him with a smile; Krewzyk had spent the morning helping them move things around inside the sewing room, and had worked alongside the women in the kitchen of the Hillside Home for several years. Krewzyk plunged the knife into Mrs. Golden's abdomen up to its hilt. He withdrew the blade and stabbed her again before turning his attention to Mrs. Van Valen. Krewzyk drove the bloodied blade clean through her breastbone with ease, and withdrew the blade so viciously that it left a gaping wound from her chest to her navel.
The women in the sewing room had already fled in terror, and Krewzyk sought refuge from his pursuers behind a sewing machine. George Paine struck the inmate's arm with a chair, breaking the blade of the knife and stunning the madman. Before Krewzyk could recover, Paine and Beemer threw him to the floor until someone was able to restrain him with a straitjacket. Krewzyk was then taken to a cell, apparently oblivious to the terrible tragedy he had wrought upon the Hillside Home.
Meanwhile, attention was being given to the victims. Mrs. Golden and Mrs. Van Valen had died before falling to the floor, and Keeper Davis was gasping for his life. His chances for survival appeared slim.
Later that evening, Coroner James Stein arrived at the Hillside Home and consulted with Drs. Lynch, Ruddy and Paine over the condition of Richard Davis. They decided against examining the wound; due to the great depth of the gash, probing the wound might cause further damage, and Davis was already in shock. They summoned Dr. S.P. Longstreet, who examined the wound and spent the night taking care of Davis. According to Dr. Longstreet, two deep incisions had been made by the surgical knife. The first incision, three and a half inches long, penetrated the lung and severed cartilage in the ribcage, loosening three ribs. The second wound, three inches in length, left an opening in the stomach from which Davis' intestines protruded. Coroner Stein stated that an inquest would not be held until Mr. Davis' fate was determined.
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| The Hillside Home as it appeared in 1913 |
The Aftermath
Superintendent George Beemer, who had managed the Hillside Home for twenty years, was deeply affected by the tragedy. When reporters asked him about the murders, he was at a loss for words. Richard Davis, however, began to show signs of improvement, and answered reporters' questions from his bed. "I was foolish to go near that man with the knife," Davis stated the morning after the attack. "I never saw him in that condition before, and I did not think he would stab me, as I always had perfect control over him."
But, in addition to sadness and confusion, the tragedy at the Hillside Home also produced anger. Because of state law, keepers of insane patients were not allowed to carry weapons in the facility. "The absence of a weapon of defense yesterday made possible the casualties," declared the Scranton Tribune on July 19, while the Scranton Truth opined: "The lesson that this should teach is that the insane are always dangerous. There is no such person as a harmless lunatic." The Tunkhannock New Age went even further, declaring:
It may be set down as a fact that there are no really insane people who are not dangerous. No matter how docile, a sudden impulse to murder may spring upon them... Insane persons are universally acknowledged to be irresponsible.
As for Ignatz Krewzyk's motive, Dr. Lynch believed that his mind had snapped because of overwork. July 19th had been "moving day" at the Hillside Home, and the inmate had been moving heavy furniture and lugging boxes up and down stairs since early morning. It was reported that the killer, a Polish immigrant, had no friends or family in the United States, and he had not recieved a single visitor during his seven year stay at the facility. District Attorney W.R. Lewis, meanwhile, stated that he wasn't sure how to proceed with Krewzyk's prosecution; there was no doubt that the man was insane, but a trial would just result in him being sentenced to another insane asylum. Whatever became of the killer is a mystery, though it is evident that Krewzyk never again tasted freedom.
On July 31, after Richard Davis was on his way to making a full recovery, a coroner's jury exonerated the Hillside Home and its staff for any wrongdoing. Four months later, Dr. William Lynch resigned his position as resident physician of Hillside Home, ostensibly to devote more of his time to his private practice. His letter of resignation to the Poor Board made no reference to the murders.
Scandals at the Hillside Home
While the murders of Missouria Ann Van Valen and Annie Golden were soon forgotten, Hillside Home would once again be in the headlines for all the wrong reasons in May of 1907, after the death of an elderly inmate named James Edmunds. Relatives of the deceased made shocking allegations of cruel and inhumane treatment which led to an investigation of the facility and its practices. Mary Edmunds, sister of the deceased, told reporters that the Hillside Home had waited several weeks to inform the Edmunds family about James' death-- presumably to cover up the fact that an examination by the Edmunds family physician, Dr. C.E. Thompson, revealed that James had suffered a broken jaw some time earlier, which was left untreated until Edmunds died a slow, agonizing death by starvation. Only then did the Hillside Home telephone his relatives. The coroner refused to definitively state the cause of the man's death, though his report revealed that, in addition to a broken jaw, Edmunds had a deep bruise over his left eye. The Edmunds family claimed that James had been clubbed to death by a night keeper named Savage, though the official position of the Hillside Home was that the inmate had died from uric acid poisoning. Telephone calls from concerned newspaper reporters to Superintendent Beemer went unanswered.
On May 29, 1907, the coroner's jury inquiring into the death of James Edmunds returned an appalling verdict, asserting that the deceased came to his death by natural causes. Attorney John R. Jones, representing the Edmunds family, called several witnesses to the stand, only to have their testimony stricken down as irrelevant or inadmissible by Coroner Stein at the objection of the Hillside Home's attorney, Harold Scragg. As a result, the jury was instructed to disregard the testimony of former keeper Thomas Thomas, who had admitted on the witness stand that he had used a club to quell an unruly patient several years earlier-- an incident which led to his termination. Perhaps that was the right call, as Thomas had left the facility long before the death of James Edmunds. However, Thomas' testimony would have established a precedent for the cruel and barbaric treatment of inmates.
In February of 1908, Richard Davis-- the keeper who had been stabbed by Ignatz Krewzyk-- filed a $100,000 suit against the Scranton Poor District for injuries he suffered at the Hillside Home, alleging that the director and superintendent had been negligent in permitting Krewzyk to roam the facility freely. His lawyer, John R. Jones, also claimed that physicians had left Davis lying on the ground for eleven hours before he received any medical attention.
Two months later, the family of Owen Gallagher asked police to investigate his death, after his brother Patrick discovered bruises and cuts on Owen's forehead, nose, lip, and cheeks when the body was shipped home for burial from the Hillside Home. Management, not surprisingly, claimed that Gallagher's death had been completely natural.
More than a decade later, in November of 1919, new startling allegations surfaced which rocked Lackawanna County. This time, an undercover probe by New York investigators hired by the American Red Cross revealed that management of the Hillside Home had engaged in abuse, graft and other forms of corruption. The two New York detectives-- a man pretending to be a dope fiend and a woman hired as a nurse-- spent two weeks at Hillside Home. During that time, the male detective lost 22 pounds due to the treatment he received from staff. "I have been in prisons and reformatories in all parts of the United States on detective work," he reported to Ralph Weeks, the chairman of the investigating committee, "but never in all my travels have I encountered such a place as the Hillside Home." His report also found that employees had been stealing large quantities of food from Hillside's storerooms, including 1,700 bushels of potatoes, leaving the inmates with one potato per week. Even though the Poor Board owned a large herd of cattle, the detective did not see an ounce of milk, a pat of butter, or beef during his two-week stay.
These accusations inspired Governor Sproul to launch his own probe. On November 6, Sproul appointed Bromley Wharton as chairman of the investigating committee. The investigation was dropped after just a few weeks. However, in February of 1920, the Central Labor Union adopted a resolution calling for the governor to reopen the investigation, alleging that patient cruelties had been "hushed up" and "whitewashed" by Wharton. Nothing ever came of this effort, and, once again, the alleged perpetrators escaped penalties.
Beaten To Death By Guards
On September 18, 1923, 40-year-old inmate William Burgerhoff-- the burly, athletic son of a prominent Scranton businessman-- died at Hillside Home under mysterious circumstances. Superintendent A.T. Rutherford, suspecting foul play, immediately notified District Attorney Harold A. Scragg (who had successfully defended the Hillside Home seventeen years earlier after the death of James Edmunds), and it was concluded that Burgerhoff had been beaten to death by two guards, Harold Duffy and Paul Salai. Duffy, who secured employment by using the alias of "Harold Williams", fled the scene. Both men were eventually indicted on murder charges, though, once again, the Hillside Home was cleared of any wrongdoing.
It was the Scranton Times who discovered that the reason why Duffy had sought employment at the Hillside Home under an assumed name was because he had been fired from the Farview State Hospital for the Criminally Insane for serious rules infractions. Nevertheless, management was never held accountable for this deadly oversight. Willard Matthews, president of the Scranton Poor Board, argued that there was no reason to criticize the Hillside management. "The Burgerhoff case is one that might happen at any similar institution," stated Matthews. "There might be a repetition of it next week."
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| William Burgerhoff |
Not surprisingly, when Harold Duffy was tried before Judge Edwards the following November, he was acquitted of all charges by the jury. Because District Attorney Scragg was unable to secure a conviction against Duffy, the charges against Paul Salai were dropped. This outrageous verdict caused one local paper, the Carbondale Daily News, to publish the headline: SCRANTON A SAFE PLACE FOR MURDER. In a rare move, Judge Edwards publicly criticized the jury for its verdict, declaring that Lackawanna County juries were "not measuring up to their responsibilities", adding that they had been "entirely too lenient" with defendants accused of heinous crimes.
Sadly, Burgerhoff wasn't the only patient killed by Hillside Home keepers. In 1932, 61-year-old Lewis Goldberg died just days after his arrival to the institution, and Coroner Bartecchi's autopsy revealed that Goldberg had suffered a ruptured kidney, three broken ribs, bruises on his face and possibly a fractured skull. The ensuing investigation discovered that Goldberg had been severely beaten around 3:30 on the morning of October 6 by two keepers, John McTague and William Tobin, and two inmates who had assisted them by holding Goldberg down. Following the struggle, Goldberg was treated for a bloodied nose by Hillside Home physicians, who somehow managed to overlook his severe internal injuries. He was taken to the hospital and died about fifteen hours later.
Deputy Coroner Mackey stated that the Hillside Home's failure to furnish Goldberg with proper medical attention came "close to being criminal negligence". However, the part of the tragedy which struck Mackey as being the most odd was the fact that Goldberg's underwear had been changed sometime between the time he was assaulted and taken to the hospital. "Someone changed those underclothes," said Mackey. "They were wet, but not with blood." This strange detail was also observed by undertaker Louis Ziman, who stated that it was customary for the Hillside Home to turn over the bodies of deceased patients nude and wrapped in a sheet. "This was the first time I got a body from the home with underclothes on," Ziman remarked.
As was the case in the deaths of James Edmunds, Owen Gallagher and William Burgerhoff, the Hillside Home failed to notify Goldberg's family until several hours had passed after he had been pronounced dead. This delay allowed Hillside Home staff to cover their tracks and dispose of incriminating evidence (such as Goldberg's underwear), or so some newspaper reporters claimed. McTague and Tobin, along with patients Joseph Murphy and James Shea, were arrested and charged with murder, but got off with a slap on the wrist; McTague and Tobin each received 1-2 year sentences from Judge William Leach after the jury's recommendation of "extreme mercy".
In 1938, the Shapiro Act was passed, which directed the state to take over county and municipal mental institutions. This act was the result of Senator Shapiro's effort to stamp out inmate abuse after an investigation of the Dyberry Hospital near Philadelphia revealed acts of "cruelty and barbarity reminiscent of the Dark Ages." According to the scathing Shapiro Legislative Committee report, the Dyberry investigation found 200 male inmates without clothing, several inmates who had been kept in straitjackets for over three years, and noted that the facility's food cart was being used to transport the dead. Tuberculosis and sexually transmitted diseases-- passed onto inmates from staffers-- ran rampant though the children's ward. When the bill was finally signed into law in May of 1943 after passing through the House by a vote of 115 to 51, the Hillside Home, along with the Blakely Poor Farm and the Ransom Poor Farm, became property of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. From that time forward, the institution became known as the Clarks Summit State Hospital. While state control did succeed in curbing (though not completely stopping) inmate abuse, the residual energy of the men and women who lived and died at the Hillside Home is said to remain strong to this day, according to those who have worked there.
Sources:
Scranton Tribune, July 19, 1906.
Montrose Democrat, July 19, 1906.
Scranton Truth, July 19, 1906.
Scranton Times, July 19, 1906.
Scranton Truth, July 20, 1906.
Scranton Tribune, July 31, 1906.
Scranton Times, July 31, 1906.
Scranton Tribune, May 17, 1907.
Scranton Times, May 29, 1907.
Scranton Truth, Feb. 11, 1908.
Scranton Tribune, April 24, 1908.
Scranton Times-Tribune, Nov. 7, 1919.
Scranton Times-Tribune, Feb. 16, 1920.
Scranton Tribune, Oct. 4, 1924.
Scranton Times-Tribune, Nov. 25, 1924.
Carbondale Daily News, Dec. 1, 1924.
Scranton Times, Oct. 7, 1932.
Scranton Tribune, May 10, 1943.