A story appeared in the Shamokin News Dispatch, Shamokin, Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, 2 March 1937, describing the death at the Dauphin County Prison, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, of Clair Guy Wingert who was accused killing William H. McElwee. Clair Guy Wingert, a trapper from the area around Clarks Valley, Dauphin County, claimed that the persons he fired shots at, McElwee and his wife, had poisoned his toe. Today’s post is the eighth of a multi-part series in which newspaper images and articles of the time are used to describe the affair.
MAN ACCUSED OF FATAL SHOOTING DIES IN PRISON
Clark Valley Eccentric Unaware He Had Fatally Wounded Neighbor
DECLARED INSANE
C. Guy Wingert, 51, of Clark Valley, known to many local and region sportsmen as “Huckleberry Finn” because of his devotion to outdoor life, died yesterday afternoon in the Dauphin County Jail at Harrisburg, where he was held as the murderer of William McElwee, a neighbor he shot to death two weeks ago Saturday. At the same time he seriously wounded Mrs. McElwee.
From the time he had been admitted to jail, Wingert refused to partake of food and gradually grew weaker. The Dauphin County Court had named a lunacy commission over the past week-end and shortly before noon yesterday two alienists visited the man in his cell. He was too weak to be taken t the warden’s office when the alienists visited the jail.
Following their examination of Wingert, the alienists returned to the court house at Harrisburg to prepare a report finding Wingert insane. It was while they were thus engaged that an attendant in the jail found Wingert dead in his cell. A physician said death was due to exhaustion, resultant from starvation.
Wingert died without knowledge he had murdered McElwee and seriously wounded Mrs. McElwee, who continues in serious condition in Harrisburg Hospital. Jail attaches did not inform the murderer his victim had died.
William Wingert Sr., and his son William Wingert Jr., of Williamstown, were killed under a rush of coal at the Williamstown colliery of the Susquehanna Collieries Company a week preceding the fatal shooting at the McElwee home. It is believed the double mine tragedy preyed upon the trapper’s mind, resulting in loss of reasoning. While a guest in the McElwee home, Wingert suddenly drew a revolver and shot McElwee and his wife. He informed the state police who arrested him the McElwees had injected poison into his toe. This proved to be a delusion as examination failed to reveal a mark of any kind on Wingert’s body or toes.
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For other parts of this series, see: The Poison Toe Murder, 1937.
News articles are from Newspapers.com.