Pennsylvania Oddities

Over a century ago, a ghastly crime was committed on a Lancaster County farm situated along Lititz Run, about midway between Zook's Mill and Rothsville Mill, in the shadows of Owl Hill. The brutal deaths of Richard Sammet and Kate Nagle Hornberger so rippled the peaceful countryside that countless locals insisted that the farm on which the tragedy occurred was haunted.

On the morning of December 9, 1929, a fire devoured a log home four miles south of Gettysburg. The inferno raged with such ferocity that by the time neighbors noticed the smoke, all they could do was watch in helpless horror.

When they finally sifted through the cinders and ash, what they uncovered was a baffling mystery-- two charred bodies, one without a head. 

Recently, the nation turned its attention to Massachusetts and the trial of Lindsay Clancy, leading to serious discussion about mental health and the consequences of a mother's heinous actions.

However, in the spring of 1960, one mother from Pennsylvania left a nation asking the very same questions when she went on trial for taking the lives of her five children. This is the astonishing true story of Ruth Mae Urdanivia and her even more astonishing fate.

The strange but true story of Faustin Wirkus, a coal region breaker boy who found fame thousands of miles away from the anthracite fields as ruler of a Caribbean island.

Summer Break! Pennsylvania Oddities will return on September 1!

Born on Christmas Day of 1856 to George and Mary Brown, Mary E. Brown spent her youth in the Chester County Quaker community of Ercildoun, an important stop on the Underground Railroad and an early center of the American abolitionist movement. There she lived until the day she met a laborer named George Toogood and fell in love. They were soon married.

After being deserted by her husband, Mary settled in West Chester, operating a boardinghouse situated in Pyle's Alley. Known throughout town as Mamie Toogood, Mary was a jovial woman with a big heart who opened her home to any of the local black population who needed a roof over their heads and food in their bellies.

Unfortunately for Mamie, her kindness began to attract the wrong sort of characters and gradually her reputation began to tarnish. And then, in February of 1906, there occurred an unfortunate event that forever altered her fortunes. This is the story of Mamie Toogood, a Foundational Black American woman who played a role in one of the strangest mysteries in West Chester history.

During the Great Depression, millions of Pennsylvanians found themselves facing an uncertain financial future, and many sought enterprising ways to keep the dark shadows of poverty at bay. Some risked jail time manufacturing moonshine, others traded labor for food and other necessities, and still others foraged for berries, bottles and scrap metal-- anything that could be sold, even if the reward was mere pennies. One woman from Allegheny County had a completely different strategy-- she jumped out of airplanes.

A house on North Eleventh Street in Philadelphia was once the home of Jimmy Logue, who rose to notoriety as one of America's most infamous criminals, earning the nickname, "The King of Sneak-Thieves".  In this house Jimmy lived with his wife, Johanna, and their young son, Percy.

But, in February of 1879, Johanna Logue vanished under mysterious circumstances. She had planned to go to New York by train, leaving her diamonds, jewelry and other valuables with her sister for safekeeping. She never arrived-- and Johanna Logue was never heard from again.

This special episode features two new Pennsylvania Oddities stories, plus Episode 1 of my new short-form true crime podcast, 15 Minutes of Infamy.

Part I: The Psychiatrist's Fatal Folly

During the early history of Rockview State Penitentiary in Centre County, the homes of prison officials were tended by the most trusted and deserving inmates, who served as domestic servants. But things changed in 1932, after the daughter of a prison psychiatrist was stabbed by a "mentally deficient" convict named Fred Collins.

Part II: The Deathbed Confession of Hetty Good

In 1895, when a sweet old Mennonite woman found herself on death's doorstep, she made an astonishing claim with her dying breaths-- that she was one of the most ruthless killers Lancaster County had ever seen.

Part III: A Black Hearse Comes at Midnight

The Archer Home for Elderly People was a highly-specialized business. That is, it specialized in the quick and speedy extermination of its residents.

This is the shocking true story of Amy Archer Gilligan, the Connecticut nursing home owner who earned her fifteen minutes of infamy after a suspicious newspaper reporter noticed that a mysterious black hearse visited the home every midnight to spirit away the bodies of her victims.

During the early 20th century the portion of Avoca to the east of Interstate 81, near the Wilkes-Barre Scranton International Airport, was a mining community known as Brown's Patch. Like most mining patches among the anthracite fields of Pennsylvania, Brown's Patch was home to many struggling, impoverished families.

In the 1920s, one such family who called Brown's Patch home was the Castners, who occupied a small, one-story house on Dawson Street. It was inside this house where one of the most gruesome murders in the history of Luzerne County occurred.

In April of 1936, authorities initially believed that three-year-old Sonny Karmendi's death had been caused by a hit-and-run driver. But the truth soon brought to light one of the most shocking murders in the history of Blair County.