On the morning of 1 November 1979, Arthur Deiter, brother of widow Elsie Mae Schoffstall of Lykens, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, found her badly beaten body on the living room floor of her home. The coroner attributed her “traumatic death” to suffocation, multiple head wounds and sexual assault.
This was the fourth murder of an elderly widow in the Lykens Valley are in less than three years. The circumstances of death of the four victims were remarkably similar.
To this day, the murder of Elsie Mae Schoffstall remains unsolved.
What follows here is a “Table of Contents” for 9 posts chronicling the story of the murder and the trial as reported in a Pottsville newspaper.
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Obituary of Elsie Mae Schoffstall
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Slain Lykens Widow Assault Victim
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Police Fail to Rule Out Murder Links
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Murder Baffles State Police
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No New Developments in Schoffstall Murder
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Murder Probe Continues
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Lykens Residents Living with Fear
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Lykens Won’t Install More Lights
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Public Auction of Schoffstall Property & Possessions
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Photo of Elsie May Schoffstall from the Pottsville Republican, 2 November 1979. She was 62 when she was murdered.
News clippings are from Newspapers.com.
Corrections and additional information should be added as comments to this post.