In 1981, a suspect was arrested, charged and tried in an unsolved murder case from 1977. The result of the trial was that the individual was acquitted.
At the end of March 1977, Mrs. Jennie E. Barr, an elderly widow, was found dead in her den in her home in Tremont, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. The cause of death was strangulation and she was also sexually assaulted. Investigators ruled the death a homicide.
This murder was the first of four that occurred in the Lykens Valley area in a less than three-year period between 1977 and 1979 – all of elderly widows.. To this day, none of the four murders have been solved.
The story of the arrest, charging and trial is told here in a 12 part series through articles published in the Pottsville Republican.
From the Pottsville Republican, 14 May 1981
Harner petition denied; evidence untrue, he says
By MATT PURCELL, Staff Writer
Schuylkill County Judge Joseph F. McCloskey has dismissed a suppression of evidence petition filed by a Tremont man who is accused of the March 1977 slaying of an elderly woman who lived several houses away from him.
William J. Harner, 24, of 14 N. Crescent St., had asked the court to suppress during his trial confessions alleged to have been made by him to a borough resident and state police concerning the strangulation murder of 78-year-old Jennie R. Barr. Harner is charged with criminal homicide, and may stand trial later this month, with the alleged confessions now permitted as evidence.
Confession under hypnosis
In a lengthy hearing held April 28, Harner testified that he was hypnotized when he allegedly confessed to Dr. J. Philip Robinson in the early morning of February 12, that he had committed the killing. He said he discussed the crime and the possible identity of the murderer with the doctor, but he denied ever making a confession to the physician. Harner also denied that he had made an oral confession to state police on February 18, after he was me by them outside the courthouse and asked to submit to questioning.
The defendant claimed that state police had delayed allowing him legal counsel that he said he requested four times while being questioned by troopers at the Pottsville state police barracks. He also charged that that police used intimidating tactics in their questioning.
The trooper’s version
The troopers testified that Harner did not request an attorney until after his alleged oral statement of confession, and that the defendant was permitted to call an attorney as soon as he asked to be permitted to do so.
Dr. Robinson, in his testimony, maintained that Harner did confess to him that he had committed the murder, saying that as the defendant recounted the crime it appeared he was getting some relief “from having something wound up inside of him for a long time.”
The doctor, who was not the defendant’s physician but a friend, said Harner was not hypnotized, and that his speech was “clear and distinct.” He described the defendant’s powers of recollection as being “very vivid.” According to testimony, Dr. Robinson had attempted to induce hypnosis in order to give Harner some relief from back and stomach pains.
McCloskey, in his written ruling on Harner’s petition, stated that the defendant “was adequately advised of his right to counsel and his right not to make any criminally inculpatory statements.”
The judge found that Harner’s constitutional rights were not violated in the making of either the statement to Dr. Robinson or police, and that neither alleged confession was illegally obtained.
McCloskey’s opinion also concluded that the defendant was “awake and cognizant” when he spoke to Dr. Robinson and that Harner was granted legal counsel immediately upon requesting it.
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For all other parts of this story, see: A Trial & An Acquittal, 1981.
For all parts of the story of the murder, see: Who Killed Jennie E. Barr?
News clipping/article from Newspapers.com.
Corrections and additional information should be added as comments to this post.