On 22 March 1979, Helen E. Horn, a widow, returned home from an evening meeting of the Gratz Historical Society. Within minutes of entering her house, she was on her dining room floor – naked and dead in a pool of blood. Although someone was charged with her murder, at trial, he was acquitted. The crime was never solved.
This post is one of 19 chronicling the discovery of the body, the arrest and trial of the suspect, and his acquittal. The story is told through articles that appeared in a Pottsville newspaper.
From the Pottsville Republican, 25 September 1979
‘Print identification challenged
By SUE BOOKS, Staff Writer
HARRISBURG – Fingerprints used as evidence against a suspect in a murder of a Gratz woman last March, were identified Monday as Gary Rank’s by a fingerprint expert for the commonwealth, but called unidentifiable [by] another expert for the defense.
The second week of the murder trial of Rank, 19, of Gratz was started Monday as the commonwealth rested its case and the defense called its witnesses.
Rank was arrested April 24, charged with the murder of his 68-year-old neighbor, Helen E. Horn, and placed in Dauphin County Prison without bail.
Cpl. John Balshy of the state police, the commonwealth fingerprint expert, said Monday he has “no doubt” that fingerprints found just inside the residence of Mrs. Horn are the defendant’s Another expert, New York professor Herbert L. MacDonell, said Thursday, it is not possible that the fingerprints were put at the scene of the crime by anyone but Rank.
However, former New York police chief Salvador Nicosia, testified Monday that a fingerprint found on a fragment of glass outside the cellar window is not clear enough to allow definite identification.
“The clarity of the print is jut not good enough to make an identification. Fingerprinting is a science, not an opinion. It has to be there, just like the nose on your face,” Nicosia said.
He said he did not examine a second lifted from the frame of the doorway leading into the dining room where the victim’s body was found, which has been identified by the commonwealth experts as the defendant’s.
A second argument against the commonwealth’s case came from a blood-type and patterns expert.
Alfred P. Stoholski of the American Scientific Testing Bureau, Manhattan, said that the victim’s assailant would have had to have gotten blood on his clothing. According to state police laboratory tests, none was found on the clothing confiscated during the several searches of Rank’s home.
Stoholski sad he based his opinion on photographs of the scene showing the victim’s body lying in a large pool of blood and the autopsy report, which suggests he victim was battered before she was strangled.
Although the defendant did not take the stand, a report of the interview of Rank by Thomas A. Santai of the state police April 11, 15 days before his arrest, was read.
The report of the interview, which Santai said was conducted before Rank was suspected of the murder, included testimony that substantially concurred with that given by others who said they were with Rank the night of the murder, March 22.
Rank, according to the report, told the trooper, he left his home about 6 p.m., picked up a friend and drove to Valley View. On the way back to Millersburg, the transmission in his car blew out, and he could drive only in first gear. About 9 p.m., according to the report, Rank said he went home to call his girlfriend. About 30 minutes later, he went to a drive-in restaurant in Gratz, then to a bar to get some beer and back to the drive-in.
On his way home from the drive-in, he noticed the time on an outside clock – 10:40 p.m. When he got home shortly thereafter, he sat in his car in the driveway to finish his cigarette and listen to the radio, went inside and went to bed, Rank was quoted as saying.
According to a report of another interview by Sgt. Joseph VanNort, head of the state police crime investigation unit at Harrisburg and the prosecutor, Rank said he knew Mrs. Horn as his third grade substitute teacher, but several times denied ever being in her house.
A theory by the commonwealth that the murderer entered Mrs. Horn’s residence through the cellar door window was challenged Monday by Defense Attorney John J. Krafsig Jr. The defense attorney measured the dimensions of the window and argued that it would have been physically impossible for Rank to have jumped through.
Trooper Dean B. Shipe of the Harrisburg Crime Investigation Unit, during cross-examination by Krafsig, said that the cellar window, the solarium door and a cellar door leading to the back door were found open March 23. The jury had not been told that the cellar door was open.
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For all other parts of this story, see: Who Killed Helen Horn?
News clipping/article from Newspapers.com.
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