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, 26 September 1979:
Rank admits touching cellar window – But denied murdering Gratz woman
By SUE BOOKS, Staff Writer
HARRISBURG – Gary W. Rank, charged with the murder of a 68-year-old Gratz woman last March, took the stand Tuesday in Dauphin County Court and offered an explanation of how a fingerprint discovered at the residence of the victim, Helen E. Horn, that has been identified as his, was placed there.
Testimony in the murder trial of the 19-year-old Gratz man was concluded Tuesday. The jury was to begin deliberating today after hearing closing arguments by the prosecuting and defense attorneys.
“I did not kill Mrs. Horn, I had no reason to kill Mrs. Horn. I had a good job. I was planning to get married in the very near future,” Rank testified Tuesday. At the time he was arrested, April 24, Rank worked at a blouse factory near his home. He said he had given an engagement ring to his girlfriend March 25.
Rank was charged with the murder of Mrs. Horn, a widow, after a fingerprint found on a fragment of glass from a broken cellar window at her home was identified as his by state police at Harrisburg.
A second fingerprint found on the frame of the doorway at the top of the cellar steps was identified as Rank’s May 3 by the state police at Harrisburg.
In his testimony Tuesday, Rank admitted having touched a cellar windowpane at the Horn home.
Late one night near the end of March, he said, he left his home to walk to a drive-in restaurant in Gratz for a pack of cigarettes.
His car wouldn’t start, Rank testified, so he decided to walk. On the way back, he said, he turned off the main road onto an alley by Mrs. Horn’s to relieve himself. He said he cut through her yard, which is just about three-tenths of a mile west of his on the same street, and heard a cat scratching at the cellar window. Assuming that the cat belonged in the cellar, Rank testified, he pushed in the window and let it in.
The only other time he was on Mrs. Horn’s property or in her house was four or five years ago when he collected some newspapers from her basement for a Boy Scout newspaper drive, Rank said.
Questioned by the prosecuting attorney, Deputy District Attorney Joseph Kleinfelter, and the presiding judge, Rank said he could not remember the number of his Boy Scout troop, the rank he attained or the Boy Scout motto.
Questioned about exactly how he grabbed the cellar window to let the cat in, he said he cupped it on the bottom with his fingers inside and pointing upward. The window swings inside.
One of the commonwealth’s fingerprint experts, Cpl. John Balshy of the state police at Harrisburg, challenged Rank’s explanation of the fingerprint with testimony that the print on the glass fragment had to have been made by a finger pointing downward. He based his testimony on a reconstruction of the broken glass by another state police officer, Trooper Dean B. Shipe.
During cross-examination, the defense attorney confronted Rank with the commonwealth’s theory of how Mrs. Horn was murdered.
Kleinfelter contended that Rank had noticed Mrs. Horn’s car traveling out of town the night of March 22 while he was parked at a drive-in restaurant, and left to go to her home.
Kleinfelter claimed that Rank broke the cellar window and lowered himself through it. He climbed the stairs leading to the dining room but found the door at the top locked. Rank then heard Mrs. Horn in the house and placed his hands on either side of the door frame to listen more carefully, Kleinfelter said.
Kleinfelter claimed that Mrs. Horn then opened the door to feed the cats on the landing at the top of the cellar steps and saw Rank, Kleinfelter said.
Rank grabbed her and choked her, Kleinfelter argued, covered her face with throw rugs in the room and beat her to death, he said.
As Kleinfelter paused after each sentence, rank denied the statements.
A fingerprint expert, the second expert to testify for the defense and the fourth to testify during the trial, said Tuesday that a latent fingerprint found on the doorway is of insufficient quality to allow an identification to be made, but that the fingerprint found on the glass fragment outside the cellar window is Rank’s.
Pressed by Kleinfelter, Vincent J. Scalice, president and director of Forensic Control Systems on Staten Island, admitted that he could find no dissimilarities between the latent fingerprint and Rank’s.
Witness payment questioned
Kleinfelter asked Scalice how much he is being paid by the defense to testify in the case.
Although a sum will not be set until the trial is over, Scalice said he had been quoted a rate per day of $350, plus lodging, transportation and meals, and was paid $500 for his fingerprint examinations in New York by defense attorney John J. Krafsig Jr.
The defendant’s father, William Rank of Gratz, was called to the stand Tuesday by the prosecuting and defense attorneys. He testified that Sgt. Joseph VanNort, head of the state police crime investigation unit at Harrisburg and the prosecutor, approached him April 11 and encouraged him to try to get his son to confess.
VanNort testified that he had asked the father to try to get his son to confess because of a statement the father allegedly made when he hears his son was being charged with murder: “May God help me, but when this murder happened, the first one I thought of was Gary. However, I did not see any change in him.”
William Rank repeatedly denied ever making the statement.
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For all other parts of this story, see: Who Killed Helen Horn?
News clipping/article from Newspapers.com.
Corrections and additional information should be added as comments to this post.