1932 Bedminster murder: Epilogue

It's curious: The census records from 1930 list Stanley (Albert Stanley, actually) as unable to read or write, despite his being 12 years old. I wonder if he really did suffer "injuries to his head in a fall" like the articles say he did.

He was also, I believe, illegitimate. His mother, born Emma E. Angeny, was married three times, but Stanley's father wasn't one of them.

Even the wife and family of the man he murdered didn't want him sentenced to death or even state prison. Maybe they understood he had something the matter with him that was beyond his control. I'm glad he didn't get a harsher sentence. Poor kid.

If his sentence was carried out in full, Stanley would have spent the next seven years at Glen Mills reform school (Founded in 1826 as the "Philadelphia House of Refuge" — wow — and extant today, its website calls it "the oldest existing residential school for court-referred young men in the country.")

The sick mother he was so desperate to see died May 8, 1937. Stanley would still have been in reform school. I suppose he was released in 1939.

In September 1942, according to a social brief in the Chester Times, Stanley and his wife Ann celebrated Stanley's birthday in Norwood, PA with some friends. (No, they didn't mention the murder.) They had a daughter, Barbara, who was born the previous year.

The Social Security Death Index says Stanley died July 1986 in Lake Charles, Louisiana, aged 68. Ann had passed away the year before.

I don't know if Cora, the wife of the murdered farmer (murdered, in fact, just two weeks before Cora's 30th birthday), ever remarried. She died November 16, 1988, at the age of 86.

Her obituary doesn't mention another husband, but does mention two children, not just the one that was an infant when Elmer died.

Also, interestingly, it tells us her maiden name: Wismer.