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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781626195158 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Arcadia Publishing SC |
| Publication date: | 06/17/2014 |
| Series: | True Crime |
| Pages: | 128 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.80(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
JULY 12, 1926: 8:34 P.M.
The pain behind his left eye made him imagine that three drops of blood were trickling down the side of his face. His heart was pounding — so loud that he was sure it could actually be heard nine feet, eight and a half inches away. That was the kind of imagined detail that always gripped Norman. Especially when he was agitated.
What he was not imagining, but what was very real indeed, was the cool, hard four-inch barrel of the .32 Savage automatic pistol he had jammed into his pants pocket before leaving the house he shared with his mother at 154 Elm Street. He had purchased the pistol from his close friend Luther Rupp a few weeks earlier. He had put one bullet in the chamber and made sure the clip was fully loaded with ten more.
He was barely aware of the slight uphill grade as he approached Bedford Street. At the corner, he quickly turned to the left and continued past the Carlisle Shoe Factory, stretching between Elm and Penn Streets. He didn't even glance toward the restaurant on Penn Street where the hill crested and sloped down to North Street.
The pace of his walking on the warm evening was somewhere between quick and forced. Twenty-seven-year-old Norman Morrison was on a mission, one of which he was not even yet fully aware. He didn't pause at North Street but strode right past the stop sign, looking neither right nor left.
The pain got worse as he passed the spot on North Bedford Street that had started all of this. It was in front of the Penn Elementary School in the shade of the tall maple trees that she had told him there was no future for them, that she wouldn't see him again. It was where she had given him the letter, where they had argued.
From there to the corner of Bedford and Louther Streets, it was exactly fifty-seven steps. Steps that, for Norman, were always one- quarter inch shy of a full yard. Always. They had not varied for the last fifteen of his twenty-seven years.
His normal countenance was serious, and now a smile was a lifetime away. His always-dark eyes were even darker. The round glasses he wore made him look a little like a surprised owl. His build was rather average and slim. He always stood ramrod straight, his hair brushed straight back. He had a birthmark on the left side of his face. His hands were those of a factory laborer, having worked the last six years at Frog and Switch.
Even though he had dropped out of school at age fourteen after eighth grade to help provide for his family, he was bright and a voracious reader. He knew, for instance, how many Lucky Strike cigarettes it would take lying end to end to reach from Carlisle, Pennsylvania, to Cleveland, Ohio. Not in a straight line, but on the available roadways. And how many Pall Malls, since they were a different length.
As he turned left and headed east on Louther Street, he saw her. She was sitting on her small porch in front of the brick row house at number 112 with her curly haired three-year-old daughter, Georgia, on her lap in a pink and white sundress. The early July evening was just beginning to cool, although there was not even a whisper of a breeze through the trees that lined both sides of the street. Across the street from her house sat Mike Smith in front of the Cumberland Fire Company, where he was the paid driver.
Morrison maintained his pace — thirty-five and three-quarters inches to the stride. Even when he crossed the street, he didn't vary. When he got to within exactly three and a half feet of her, Norman Morrison pulled the pistol from his pocket and shot the pretty forty- one-year-old Frances McBride three times, killing her almost instantly. As she fell to the sidewalk in a widening pool of blood, little Georgia miraculously survived and was unhurt. No words had been spoken. The pain in his eye was now throbbing in rhythm with his heart — 116 beats a minute. Without another thought, he pointed the pistol at his own head and pulled the trigger. He missed. His second shot was better, but instead of killing him, it struck his optic nerve and left him blind and unconscious.
Within minutes, Frances's cousin Pearl Glass, who lived just across the street, swept up the blood-covered little Georgia and carried her over to her house. Mike Smith called the police department from the phone just inside the firehouse. James McBride rushed from the poolroom of Rueben Swartz at the corner of Bedford and Louther Streets to his ex-wife's side. People began to gather, and chaos set in.
CHAPTER 2GEORGIA MCBRIDE: REMEMBERED OR NOT?
Years later, Georgia thought she could remember her mother arguing with a man in front of the school and then, taking Georgia by the hand, walking home and sitting on the front step. Then, a little later, there was a bright flash and a loud noise, and she fell from her mother's lap. And she had a picture in her mind of her mother rolling off the steps and into the street side gutter. And then she remembered nothing after that.
But she was always haunted by the question of whether it was a valid memory or someone had simply told her about it. After all, she knew research showed that memories formed by children as young as three almost always faded by the age of ten or twelve. On the other hand, the trauma associated with this tragedy might well have burned itself into her retrospection.
At any rate, there she was in the Glass kitchen being wiped as clean of her mother's blood as could be managed. And she was crying softly, not really knowing what had just occurred. She was given a cookie, which eased the crying a bit. Pearl took that opportunity to telephone Georgia's sister Mildred, who by that time was recently married to a young army officer, Edward Clark, assigned to Carlisle Barracks. Mildred quickly came to the Glass home and gathered little Georgia into her arms, cookie crumbs and all. Mildred and Ed immediately made room for Georgia in their home, even though they had not had much time to become accustomed to being married.
Georgia's grandparents George and Kathryn Bowermaster realized that the arrangement was not the best for either Georgia or Mildred and Ed and decided to take little Georgia to live with them. The house they rented at 216 East High Street had been the scene of a bloody suicide in the very room that was to be Georgia's. The back wall was still stained with the blood of the poor, unfortunate soul. Along with the blood was another unusual item: a toilet. Georgia spent the next few months of her young life in these strange surroundings.
CHAPTER 3POLICE ARRIVE
Police chief Ross Trimmer arrived on the bloody scene with Officers Raymond Wolf and Fullerton Speck. In addition to the two people lying on the sidewalk, there was blood everywhere, running from the corner of the house down the gutter and into the street, pooling around the bodies.
The chief, a tall, commanding figure of a man well known in the East End, had to take charge of the rapidly growing crowd that had already gathered there. When he and the officers had moved the mob away from the scene a bit, he commandeered two cars, one belonging to Robert Baker, into which they placed Frances, and the other the car of Richard James, which in turn was loaded with Norman. Off they sped to the Carlisle Hospital.
The hospital was fairly new, having moved from its former location on North West Street to its new home in the Old Mooreland section of town on July 24, 1916. A newspaper account reported, "On the north side alone there are 26 windows and there is not a dark corner throughout the hospital." One thousand people had attended the opening of the three-story limestone sixty-bed facility. Dr. R.M. Shepler, a longtime Carlisle physician, was president of the board of trustees.
Wary of contagious diseases, no admittance was allowed for patients suffering from bubonic plague, whooping cough, measles, scarlet fever or smallpox. Charity patients who were judged to be incurable were released. A five-dollar charge was levied for use of the emergency room, and the board was investigating the idea of heating the operating rooms and the maternity ward. The horse-drawn ambulance was operated by Urie Lutz, a local undertaker, until May 10, 1927.
Frances was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital, having been shot in the jugular, the abdomen and the arm. Acting coroner John Boyer requested that undertaker William Ewing take charge of the body and remove it to his funeral parlor, which had been founded by his grandfather. William was the third generation of Ewings to own and operate the funeral business.
Alexander Black Ewing had come to Carlisle from his birthplace in Middletown, Dauphin County, in 1849 at the age of eighteen. Having stayed in school longer than most boys of the time, he was well equipped to make his own way. During his boyhood, he had worked with his father driving mules on the Union Canal towpath. He was too ambitious, however, to allow that work to be his life's own.
When he moved west to Carlisle, he boarded in the household of Jacob Fetter, a cabinetmaker. Also in the 1850 census listing for the household were Jacob's son David and another boarder, Alfred Cree, both of whom were cabinetmakers as well. A.B., as Alexander soon came to be known, apprenticed himself to learn the cabinetmaking trade with Henry Fetter, another of Jacob's sons. As almost all cabinetmakers also doubled as undertakers, he learned that trade as well.
In 1853, he went into business for himself at 159 West High Street and continued there until his death in 1903. When an accident in 1893 left A.B. unable to personally supervise the business, his twenty-seven- year-old son Hastings, who had been working with his father, stepped forward to assume management of the firm. Both father and son took great pride in the quality of their work, and the funeral business thrived.
When Hastings died in 1924, his son William J., who had received his license to practice the art of undertaking in 1920 and had been associated with his father on West High Street, relocated the Ewing Funeral Home to his own home at 148 South Hanover Street.
Meanwhile, at the hospital, Dr. Shepler was attending to Morrison in the emergency room and ascertained that Morrison's second self- inflicted shot had entered the right temple, about a half inch below his brain. He was talking incoherently, leading Chief Trimmer to the conclusion that he would get no information from the wounded man unless his condition improved overnight.
So instead of interrogating Morrison, he assigned a guard detail to prevent escape for as long as the man remained in the hospital. Drawing the assignment were Constables Sylvan Clay for daytime duty and Ardell Butterfield for night responsibility. They were each paid a fee of four dollars a day for the duty.
At least three hundred people had gathered by now in front of Frances's house. Stories swept through the crowd like a windblown brushfire. It was generally known by everyone that the probable cause of the shooting was jealousy. Most residents of the town's East End knew that Morrison had been seeing Frances for some time and had been smitten by her beauty and charms almost from the first time he had seen her. Certainly from the first time she had smiled and spoken to him.
Although her divorce from James McBride was finalized in March, they had been separated for more than three years before that. Frances had filed for divorce on March 10, 1925. Herman Berg Jr., the divorce master, fixed Wednesday, the sixth day of January 1926, as the day for taking testimony; two o'clock in the afternoon as the time; and his office, International Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) Building, 31 West High Street, as the place. The notice of the meeting was sent by registered mail to James McBride, and the return receipt was attached to the record. James did not show up, but the meeting started on time. Frances was present and represented by Hyman Goldstein, Esq.
Frances was sworn in, and questioning by Mr. Goldstein began. The transcript follows just as it was recorded:
Q. Mrs. McBride, where do you live?
A. 112 East Louther Street, Carlisle, Pa.
Q. How long have you lived in Carlisle?
A. About twenty-five years or more.
Q. For the past twenty-five years?
A. Yes.
Q. Are you married?
A. Yes indeed.
Q. To whom?
A. James M. McBride.
Q. When were you married?
A. 1902, twenty-four years on the first day of July.
Q. Where were you married?
A. Courthouse, Carlisle, Pa.
Q. By whom?
A. Mr. Bentz [a county official].
Q. Samuel Bentz?
A. Yes sir.
Q. Immediately after your marriage, did you go to housekeeping?
A. No sir, I had to live with his people, or I couldn't have lived with him at all.
Q. Where did you go to from there?
A. On North Street, the first time, we only lived there two months when we broke up and then I went to each of the sisters and around to the mother, and then he made me live in the alley, then we broke up again.
Q. Then where did you go?
A. To his sister on Bedford Street, then to the mother again, then I got a house and we lived on Louther Street going on six years, then from there to East Street, then on Louther Street again, then I had to go to Bedford Street and stay there six months, then back to Louther Street.
Q. Do you have any children to Mr. McBride?
A. Yes sir.
Q. What are their names and ages?
A. Mildred, sixteen, Helen, twelve, and the baby, Georgia Kathryn, two years in August.
Q. What was the conduct of your husband towards you?
A. Not good at all. My life was miserable from the day I married him. When I first married him, I couldn't stay in bed, he knocked me out of bed and I had to sit up all night in a cold room. I would take cold and I would nearly die, I had to be doctoring all the time, the doctor thought I was going into consumption.
Q. Did he support you?
A. He never kept me, I had to write to my people at times at Middletown to get money to live on, he gave me $5.00 a week when I first married him, I had to pay Ed Cronican, pay the rent and insurance and the rest I had to live on.
Q. How did he treat you?
A. He would grab me by the neck and wrist and I had children on my lap. He had all the skin twisted off my wrist.
Q. How often did that occur?
A. Every other day, sometimes every day he would strike me and threaten me that he would cripple me or starve me to death if I would send for my people. He said he would kill my stepfather if he would come in the house. They have been sent for at night to come to my place when he was abusing me so.
Q. You stated that shortly after your marriage he ill-treated you?
A. He didn't give me enough money to live on, he would knock me out of bed and abuse me all the time.
Q. How often did he knock you out of bed?
A. So many times I can't remember how often it was.
Q. He struck you often?
A. Yes.
Q. Did he choke you?
A. Yes.
Q. Made your body black and blue from striking you?
A. Yes, he threw me down across a chair, he was half drunk and he wanted me to dance with him. He used to back me up towards something and then he would knock me down.
Q. Did he ever curse you?
A. Yes.
Q. What did he call you?
A. I was a whore and everything he could think of.
Q. Son of a Bitch?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you work?
A. Yes I worked in the shoe factory until I had children and then I washed and ironed for at least a dozen people in Carlisle and keep the house going. I went to see Mr. Boyer [justice of the peace] and I had him in front of Mr. Boyer.
Q. For what?
A. For his treatment to me.
Q. Mr. Boyer told you what?
A. He told me I was to take the children and go away from him. There was no use of living with him.
Q. And as a result of his ill-treatment towards you were you placed in the care of a physician?
A. Yes.
Q. Did he ever threaten to kill you?
A. Dozens of times.
Q. Did he have the means to kill you?
A. Yes he had a revolver and I took it and hid it. He scared my grandmother pretty near to death, she pretty near died. I hid the revolver and he thought he had left it over in the barber shop and he got another one and he told me he would kill me or starve me to death. I never knew what it was to get any money from him since I was married to buy anything with.
Q. You were compelled to leave him?
A. He told me time and time again what he would do if I didn't leave, that morning I didn't answer him and he said if you are not out of here by dinner time, if you will not go by good talking to you will have to go by other means.
Q. You felt your husband would do you bodily harm if you remained?
A. Yes. He would wait until the children and me would go to bed and he would think they were sleeping and then he would start in to fuss with me. Some of the men over at the engine house would yell at him to shut up, they would say, shut your damn mouth and let that woman sleep. It was impossible to endure it any longer. I lived with him twenty years and I never had enough to eat. I would often send down to my mother to get something to eat for the children and myself.
Q. What was the date you left?
A. January 10th 1923
Q. Have you lived or cohabited with him since that time?
A. No indeed.
Q. Did he have any love for the children?
A. I would say not. He wouldn't take any of them on his lap, he said he didn't want to smell like a married man. If they would bump against him or skin his shoes he would fuss and carry on terrible. He has the first time yet to buy anything for them.
Q. How did you treat your husband?
A. Too good.
Q. Would you prepare his meals for him?
A. Yes indeed I would get things in the house with my own money, he never paid for the things, I never got that much money from him, but he never missed his meals. His clothes were always ready for him. I would have to get his water ready and carry it up stairs for him to take a bath, and he would take a bath, and then I would have to go up and bring the water down.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Murder in Carlisle's East End"
by .
Copyright © 2014 Paul D. Hoch.
Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Foreword David L. Smith 7
Acknowledgements 9
Preface 11
Introduction. Carlisle, Pennsylvania 19
1 July 12, 1926: 8:34 p.m. 25
2 Georgia McBride: Remembered or Not? 27
3 Police Arrive 29
4 Coroner's and Grand Juries 39
5 Georgia: With Her Grandparents 45
6 Norman: Harrisburg State Hospital 49
7 Georgia: More Changes 51
8 Norman: Trial 55
9 Georgia: Starts School 71
10 Norman: Eastern State Penitentiary 75
11 Georgia: Appendicitis 79
12 Norman: Housemates 81
13 Georgia: Scarlet Fever 83
14 Norman: Clemency 89
15 Georgia: Fifteen and Beyond 95
16 Norman: End of a Life 101
17 Georgia: New Life 105
Appendix A Walk With Me 113
Appendix B Changes in the Landscape 117
Bibliography and Other Sources 123
About the Author 127