Codorus Murders

This tragic tale begins with John Blymire. He was born in York County in 1895, at the time, this was an area of Pennsylvania steeped in the superstition and lore of the Pennsylvania Dutch folk. As late as the early 1900s, this part of the state held strong beliefs in witches, witchcraft, and folk magic. Many people could make a living as witches or “powwowers.” They would cure illness through faith healing using magical powders, potions, and charms. In addition, they could hex and remove hexes as the situation demanded. Every good witch needs a spellbook; for the Powwower, that was the Long Lost Friend, a book by John George Hohman.

Murder is the last thing that comes to mind on Thanksgiving. But that’s precisely what happened in 1928 when three men broke into the home of Nelson Rehmeyer in a misguided attempt to lift an evil curse. Through a series of unfortunate events, Rehmeyer was brutally murdered, and his body set ablaze. Details of the horrific event spread like wildfire, quickly becoming national news.

Ross McGinnis author of "The Trials of Hex" takes you through the story and gets the facts straight. The interview was conducted by a local author and historian Jim McClure.

Felicia Ann "Marshmallow" Smith, 26, was ushered to heaven by the Lord's angels on Wednesday, December 7, 2011. Born on April 2, 1985, in York, she was the daughter of Kimberly Smith.  Today we sat down with her mother and discussed what she believes to be unsolved .  We go through the events of that day that lead to the her daughter,s death.  Her mother feels that not enough was done to help close this case and the family is looking for closure on what happened that day.   

Update on the status of the show along with new content that is coming in the near future, the Clip that you are listening to is from 2016 Tim Knaub. Tina Knaub's Father interviewed by Rick Lee for YDR when they did a retrospective on the Unsolved case.  

Visit Codorusmurders.com to see all the visuals that go along with the podcast as well as case files and other items related to true crime. 

In the Summer of 1969 after the events of the summer Anna Johnson went missing and was found days later laying face down near the Codorus Creek in Bantz Park.  Anna Johnson was the Great-Grandmother of one of York's most famous and accomplished citizens Loretta Claiborne. 

Loretta Claiborne was born on August 14, 1953, in York, Pennsylvania. She was the fourth of eight children, and she and her siblings were raised by their single mother, Rita Claiborne. Loretta Claiborne was born partially blind, with an intellectual disability and clubbed feet; she underwent surgeries to correct her feet and visual impairment when she was young, and was unable to walk until she was four years old. She learned to talk when she was seven. Although doctors advised Claiborne's mother to institutionalize the girl, Rita steadfastly refused, choosing to raise Claiborne at home with her other children.

Loretta Claiborne was the middle of seven children in a poor, single-parent family. Born partially blind and intellectually challenged, she was unable to walk or talk until age four. Eventually, though, she began to run. And before she knew it, she had crossed the finish line of twenty-six marathons, twice placing among the top one-hundred women in the Boston Marathon. She introduced President Bill Clinton at the 1995 Special Olympics World Summer Games has won medals in dozens of its events, and also holds the current women's record in her age group for the 5000 meters at seventeen minutes.

Learn more about Loretta Claiborne at http://www.lorettaclaiborne.com

“The Midland Cemetery, which dates back to the Civil War period, is located in Swatara Township, just outside Steelton, PA. The larger part of Midland had been buried under weeds and brush for 35 years before Barbara and her 11 year old son ventured into the cemetery in 1993. Barbara recollected: "When I was a little girl, my parents would come here after church on Sunday. Because I had allergies, they'd roll up the windows and leave me in this hot car while they disappeared into the brush--I'd sit and wait. Well, I was 35 when I came back here to see where they had gone on these Sunday afternoons to visit with Grandpa--and here I am...I thought was just that little corner of a cemetery...I started researching and pulling up the old deeds from 1932. And it just expanded. Thank God it expanded without my knowledge, because I don't know if I would have been able to stand out here right now and talk to you. Because I didn't know it was this big. And I didn't know what kind of work I was getting into, and what kind of history I was going to open up." Many of the neighbors did not even know that the cemetery was there. At this time, Barbara decided to clean up this "corner cemetery" a little every day and figured that it would be in good shape by Spring.”

http://midlandcemetery.com

Racial tensions began to escalate in York, Pennsylvania in 1963. Black citizens of York protested police violence and discrimination at City Hall. Their demands for a bi-racial police review board were turned down by the all-white city council. Citizens continued to protest over the next few years and complained of police brutality and the use of police dogs to curb protests. During this time, the city saw the rise of several notorious all-white gangs. By the mid-1960s, York had become deeply racially divided, and in 1968 a series of white-on-black crimes incited retaliation in the form of fire-bombings and street brawls.

On July 17, 1969, with racial tensions at the boiling point, a black youth who burned himself playing with lighter fluid blamed a local white gang known as the Girarders. That would later be revealed as a lie, but not before the pent-up resentments of the black community turned violent. That same day, seventeen-year-old Taka Nii Sweeney was shot by an unseen gunman when York City Police Detective George Smith stopped him and his friends for violating the city's youth curfew. White and black gangs began fighting that afternoon. Eleven others were hurt when people in six blocks of the city reverted to rock-throwing, barricading and shooting from behind bushes and poles.

Fighting lasted through the night and into the next day. Nine more people were injured, including Officer Henry C. Schaad. Schaad, a twenty-two-year-old rookie with eleven months on the force, was struck by a bullet believed to have been fired by a black rioter while riding in one of the police department's two armored trucks. White gangs around the city prepared for revenge. Schaad languished in the hospital for nearly two weeks before succumbing to his injuries.

As Schaad lay dying, racial tension soared in the city. Fights broke out, buildings were set ablaze and police began barricading black neighborhoods. More than sixty people were injured, one hundred were arrested, and entire city blocks were burned.

Working on a collective theory that the Son of Sam was a cult, and possible the zodiac killer was the same cult a few years earlier in the Bay areas.  Look at the similarities and draw your own conclusion.

Using footage from Now it can be told and Unsolved mysteries the similarities are common.  Could the Zodiac have been more than one person and behind it a satanic cult that carried out the murders and sent the letters to the police? 

Let us know what you think.

After 3 months of no in studio podcast we got back together to discuss the last two episodes and discuss the last content, this furthers the discussion along.  As before look back at the content that we have been going though, the video episodes are posted on you tube and there is more content to come.  

We sat down with Peter Levy to discuss the History of York City and the civil uprising of the 1960's and beyond below is his bio pulled for his web page and his book "The Great Uprising" is available to purchase through amazon.

Bio pulled from - https://plevy9.wixsite.com/peterlevy

I'm a professor of history at York College, where I have taught courses on Recent America, the Civil Rights Movement, Women in the U.S., Environmental History, and Race & Justice. I have written over a dozen books, including The Great Uprising: Race Riots in Urban America during the 1960s (Cambridge Univ. Pr. 2018), Civil War on Race Street: The Civil Rights Movement in in Cambridge, Maryland (Univ. of Florida Pr. 2003) and The New Left and Labor (Univ. of Illinois Pr. 1994). I am also the co-editor with Jeffrey Littlejohn and Reginald Ellis of The Seedtime, the Work, and the Harvest: New Perspectives on the Black Freedom Struggle in America (Univ. of Florida Pr. 2018) and the co-author with Randy Roberts, Alan Taylor and Emma J. Lapsansky-Warner of United States History (Prentice Hall, rev. ed. 2016).

https://youtu.be/A2lXzv0q0yk

Prelude to Season 2 of the Codorus Murders sit down interview with Jim McClure, former editor of YDR.

(YDR BIO)

I have been editor of the York Daily Record/York Sunday News and associated digital products since May 2004. I will retire on April 1, 2019, after 30 years with the YDR.

After Gannett Co. purchased the YDR in June 2015, I have also served as state editor for Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, overseeing six newsrooms.

For about 2 1/2 years, I served as East Region Editor for the YDR's former parent Digital First Media, with oversight for 20+ daily newsrooms and 50 or more weeklies. In that capacity, I was the senior editor on DFM on-site teams that covered the school shootings in Newtown, Conn., and the Boston Marathon bombing.

I am the author or coauthor of seven books on York County history -- “Never to be Forgotten, A Year-By-Year Look at York County’s Past,” “Nine Months in York Town, American Revolutionaries Labor on Pennsylvania’s Frontier,” “Almost Forgotten, A Glimpse at Black History in York County, Pa.,” “East of Gettysburg, A Gray Shadow Crosses York County, Pa.” and ” “In the Thick of the Fight, York County, Pa., Counters the Axis Threat in WWII.” With Scott Mingus, I co-authored “Civil War Voices From York County” and "Echoing Still: More Civil War Voices from York County." (*For sale at www.yorkheritage.org and www.barnesandnoble.com.)

https://youtu.be/6Hn6k1rqeXk