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, 4 June 1981:
Two oral confessions related by witnesses at Harner trial
By MATT PURCELL and MIKE McANDREW, Staff Writers
The prosecution in the murder trial of William J. Harner rested its case Wednesday after its chief witnesses gave accounts of two oral confessions allegedly made to them by Harner, who the jury was told will testify in his own defense during the trial.
Dr. J. Philip Robinson, Tremont, calmly testified that Harner, 24, confessed in him that he was responsible for the March 1977 slaying of his Tremont neighbor, Jennie E. Barr, an elderly widow.
The doctor said the confession took place following some drinking and an early morning drive in February of this year. Harner allegedly revealed the information during an attempt by the doctor to hypnotize him as the two sat in Dr. Robinson’s parked car in Tremont at approximately 3 a.m. February 12.
Hypnosis attempted
Dr. Robinson testified that he attempted to induce hypnosis to relax Harner, who he said was having back and stomach trouble. The doctor stated that the defendant was not under hypnosis when he allegedly confessed, however.
“He relaxed and then during the induction, he sat straight up and said ‘they tried to do this (hypnotize) to me before and it didn’t work,’” Dr. Robinson, 57 said. “He wasn’t in a hypnotic state.”
The doctor explained that he knew the defendant had been interrogated previously concerning the murder of Mrs. Barr and assumed that the attempt at hypnosis Harner had referred to took place at that time.
Dr. Robinson said the defendant told him that besides the hypnosis, police had given him a lie detector test, which Harner said he passed.
Ignore test, jurors told
At this point, Judge Joseph F. McCloskey instructed the jury that it may not consider the test when it determines the defendant’s guilt or innocence.
Earlier, he had ruled that jurors were to be permitted to hear testimony concerning the polygraph test so that they might know the doctor’s entire story. Pennsylvania courts do not normally permit testimony on polygraph tests, which are inadmissible as evidence.
“H asked me who I thought killed Jennie Barr,” Dr. Robinson continued after the interruption. “I said the man from Vaux Avenue.”
The witness said Harner responded, “No, I did it.”
“I said you couldn’t have (killed her). He kept insisting that he did and started to tell me how,” Dr. Robinson said.
“He said he saw her in the bathroom washing things with no clothes on and this excited him,” the witness testified.
Harner confided that he used his shirt to open an unlocked window and gain entry without leaving fingerprints, said the doctor.
Following the alleged confession, Dr. Robinson testified that Harner indicated he was “only testing him.” Dr. Robinson said the defendant said he thought Delbert R. Straub, Marietta, had committed the crime. Straub also testified Wednesday, denying any involvement in the killing.
Under cross-examination by defense attorney Wallace C. Worth, Allentown, the doctor discounted the effect of the alcohol upon either himself or the defendant.
Dr. Robinson admitted to consuming four drinks and taking a six-pack of beer in the car. He said Harner, who had been in a bar earlier and drank two of the six cans of the doctor’s beer in the car, “appeared to be in good condition.” The doctor said he had socialized with Harner fairly often.
Conflict in accounts
The account Dr. Robinson gave yesterday of Harner’s alleged confession to him conflicted on one point with state trooper James A. McCann’s subsequent testimony on a second oral confession Harner allegedly made February 18 at the Pottsville state police barracks.
The doctor said Harner confessed to seeing Mrs. Barr naked in the bathroom through a window. But McCann, who along with Trooper Ronald Haberstroh allegedly heard the second confession, said the defendant told him he came upon the elderly woman seated in the den watching television, and that she did not “hear him coming.”
Both accounts, as told by the witnesses, contained the statement by Harner that he locked the window after entering the home.
McCann said Harner told him that he recalled the Johnny Carson Show being on Mrs. Barr’s television, and that he didn’t remember much about his alleged struggle with her, but did recall that she had green knitting needles and struck him in the arm.
According to other testimony, no blood was found on the needles when they were tested at a state police crime lab. The test did not take place until after Harner’s arrest in February.
Harner said he left the home through a basement window, kicking it in and reaching in to lock it after exiting, according to McCann. He said he went directly home, claiming that he saw Straub and another person on the way, the trooper said. He added that Harner told him he had had some beer that night but wasn’t drunk, and that he recalled washing his hands in a toilet and then flushing it.
In relating the circumstances of the second alleged confession, McCann said he and Haberstroh approached Harner outside the county courthouse at about 10:10 a.m. February 18. Harner agreed to their request to go to the barracks with them for questioning on the Barr murder, he said.
Prior to the alleged confession, Harner did not indicate that he wished a lawyer to be present, McCann said.
Attorney Worth, however, later said in his opening statement for the defense that Harner will testify that he requested and was denied a lawyer four times during the interview, and that he did not confess to the murder. Defense testimony was to begin today.
McCann said Harner “appeared normal” during and after he gave his alleged statement, which the trooper said was completed about 2:30 p.m.
No stenographer of recording device was utilized in the interview, and no written statement was obtained from Harper, he said.
After the prosecution had completed its questioning of McCann, Worth launched immediately into extensive cross-examination of him, first asking the trooper why Harper was not placed under arrest prior to his alleged confession at the barracks.
McCann responded that he “felt we should have more evidence.”
Worth then questioned whether Harner had given “samples of anything you wanted” for police lab analysis, and McCann agreed that he had.
The attorney asked if it was correct that “nothing happened” as a result of tests on the defendant’s clothing, hair, and a blood stain found on a toilet seat from the home. McCann answered that this was true.
He further asked McCann why he did not have a recorder operating during the interview, and the trooper said this did not cross his mind at the time.
McCann said he did not obtain a written statement from Harner because of his concern that this might prevent him from taking the defendant before a district magistrate for preliminary arraignment within the required six-hour period after he was picked up. Harner was arraigned at Tremont at about 3:30 p.m., he said.
Noting that previous testimony indicated that the kitchen door of the Barr home was unlocked, Worth also questioned why the murderer would have left by the cellar window.
The victim’s son, David L. Barr, Utica, New York, later testified that while visiting his mother on the weekend prior to her death, he went to the cellar to repair a washing machine located near the window, and did not recall the window being broken at that time.
Worth questioned whether Harner at any time during the interview had denied committing the crime. McCann said that he did, “in essence,” adding that he still continued the questioning because “I felt that he wasn’t telling the truth.”
Next to testify was trooper Haberstroh, who said that after the confession was made, Harner asked to call an attorney and telephoned the office of C. Palmer Dolbin, Pottsville, who is serving as co-counsel for him in the trial.
Haberstroh said that while Harner was speaking to Dolbin’s office, he heard the defendant give his name, say that he had been charged with a homicide, and then add, “I killed the lady. I just went nuts.”
The trooper further testified that following the interrogation, Harner told him he felt “better” and “relieved.”
Worth asked Haberstroh if Harner said why he felt relieved, and the trooper answered that he did not, after which Worth suggested that the relief could have stemmed simply from the ending of the questioning.
The prosecution also called Delbert Straub to the stand, in an attempt to discount Harner’s claim of seeing him near the site of murder on the night it is though to have taken place. In a statement Harner gave to police in 1977, which the jury heard in testimony Tuesday, Harner said that while walking home in the early morning hours of March 31 he saw Straub with blood on his right hand on Crescent Street, on which Mrs. Barr lived.
Straub denied being on the street, and when asked directly by Assistant District attorney Maryann Conway if he had murdered Mrs. Barr, he responded, “No ma’am.”
Straub said he was in Tremont on a visit at his father’s Vaux Avenue home on March 30-31. He said on the evening of March 30 he was outside a movie theatre, as Harner had told police, and did smoke marijuana there, as Harner claimed.
He testified that others were at the corner as well, and the conversation was about women. Harner told police that he had heard Straub say that he “liked older ladies,” but Straub, then living in Lancaster, said Wednesday that he commonly refers to his wife as his “old lady.”
He further testified that when he left the theatre area he went to Pete’s Bar in Tremont, remaining there until about 9:30 p.m. While he was walking home, a neighbor Terry Levan, stopped his auto and gave him a lift, he said. Straub said he arrived home at about 10 p.m., and went to bed between 10 and 10:30 o’clock.
Levan corroborated Straub’s testimony, saying he saw him at the bar and gave him a ride home, Straub’s brother Dean also testified that Delbert arrived home at about 10 p.m., adding that he saw his brother in bed at 1 a.m. that night, as he had to pass through Delbert’s bedroom on the way to the bathroom. Dean Straub also testified that he saw his brother in bed hours later, at 6 a.m., when he got up to go to work.
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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.