Description

by Daniel Cruson

In this pamphlet Dan tells of a murder that occurred in the southwest corner of town, a fact that was discovered by one of his Local History students in 1984 from her research of local folklore. When she did the initial research, most of the details of the case could not be found. Dan then recounts the 15 year search to find the details of a case that turned out to have many bizarre twists and turns. Andrew Peck who was characterized by the Newtown Bee as “a moral outlaw,” was murdered and Rudolf Stoffel, a recent German immigrant and charcoal burner with a short, violent temper, was the murderer, but it took two years before enough evidence could be collected to convict him. An account of the process of collecting this evidence, leads the reader past a cast of strange characters who lived a life that could only have been lived in this frontier area, farthest away from the moral authority of the three towns whose boundaries come together there.