How A Murder Mystery Was Solved in 1877

Montgomery County’s annals of crime are no more prolific than those of the average county. However, there were several murders so mystifying that they aroused wide public attention.

What was known in the 1870s as the Elm Station murder at first seemed completely baffling. The county then had no staff of detectives, and Lower Merion Township, where the crime occurred, had no police. But the citizens of the neighborhood united and pressed the investigation to a conclusion, so that the details of the case were unraveled.

On February 19, 1877, three youths living in West Philadelphia boarded a freight train on the Pennsylvania Railroad to steal a ride. As the train neared Elm Station, now Narberth, trainmen discovered the boys and put them off the train. Along the tracks at this point, about 200 yards below the station, was an embankment covered with thickets. The boys climbed up the embankment and loitered about the locality. Presently one of them was attracted by something protruding from the earth. Looking closely, he and his companions saw it was a human foot.

The three boys walked home. The next day they told other boys about the foot sticking out of the ground at Elm Station. 765 Soon a large party of boys set out to walk to Elm Station to view the grisly find This time one of the boys told the telegraph operator at the railroad station about the foot. He summoned Josiah S. Pearce of Ardmore, a justice of the peace who also was an undertaker and a deputy coroner.

Removal of a slight covering of earth and stones revealed a human body, fairly well preserved, though the face was disfigured. The body seemed to be that of a German about 30 years old. The only clothing consisted of an outer shirt and an undershirt.

Squire Pearce empaneled a jury and began an inquest on February 22nd, but adjourned the hearing after receiving the evidence of those present when the body was unearthed.

Elm Station, or Narberth, at that time was still part of Lower Merion Township. The only officer of the law in that township was a constable. So, as Squire Pearce was a justice of the peace and a deputy coroner, it seemed to devolve on him to do whatever was to be done to clear up the crime. However, a group of citizens of the vicinity, under the leadership of N. Parker Shortlidge [Shortridge], resolved to come to the aid of Pearce. Fifty of them subscribed $1600 to be expended in an effort to trace the murderer. For, unquestionably, it was a murder, the skull of the victim having been crushed.

Announcement was made that $1000 reward would be paid for the arrest of the murderer. Within a day or two a man called on Squire Pearce and offered to take up the investigation. His name was David Abrams, and he lived in West Philadelphia. At the Centennial of 1876 he had been a guard, but otherwise he had no experience in police or detective work. He was authorized to make certain inquiries, though no salary was promised him. The efforts of this man, in conjunction with those of Squire Pearce, were largely responsible for the eventual solution of the mystery.

In Norristown the county commissioners were urged to offer a reward to augment that of the Lower Merion citizens. They were willing to do so and proposed to fix the amount at $400. However, their counsel, Colonel James Boyd, advised them that they had no right to pay a reward. In May District Attorney Jacob V. Gotwalts petitioned the court for authority to appoint a detective to assist the district attorney. Judge Henry P. Ross granted the request but stipulated that the appointee should serve only until the conclusion of the ensuing term of court, when the matter of making the appointment permanent could be considered. Thereupon Mr. 766 Gotwalts appointed Jonathan M. Hart to the place. Hart, a resident of Norristown, had been employed about the courthouse in various capacities.

Meanwhile Squire Pearce and Detective Abrams were busy. They questioned residents in the neighborhood of the station. No one was aware that an altercation had occurred thereabouts. No one recalled having seen a man resembling the one whose body had been found. Physicians who examined the body said it might have been in the frozen ground for two months.

The shirts on the body were of fine linen. On the undershirt was a monogram, apparently consisting of two German capital letters, which, however, could not readily be deciphered. Among the hundreds who came to Ardmore to try to identify the body was a German shirt manufacturer from Philadelphia. The superior workmanship of the outer shirt interested him. He was sure it had come from northern Prussia.

Dr. Edward Morwitz, publisher of the Philadelphia Demokrat, a German newspaper of wide circulation, gave his assistance, as the victim of the crime evidently was a German. He had Herman Dieck, one of the best writers on his staff, prepare a full account of the case so far as known, and copies of the edition containing the story were sent to all German newspapers in America and Germany. The Demokrat narrative was widely reprinted, and soon letters by the score began arriving at the office of Squire Pearce from Germans who feared the man killed at Narberth might be a missing relative. Many Germans also came to Narberth to see the body, which was placed in a vault in the cemetery of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church and for a long time remained in the condition in which it was found.

None of the visitors could identify the body, and none of the letters offered a promising clue, until one arrived on April 30, 1877, from Frederick William Hoehne, proprietor of a cafe in Berlin, Germany. Hoehne wrote that he had read about the tragedy in a Berlin newspaper, and he thought the slain man might be his son, Max Hugo Hoehne. The previous September the son, 25 years old, had sailed for America. A letter had been received from him telling of his arrival at New York on October 10th, and his visit to a cousin. After that the father heard nothing further about the son until a letter came signed with the son’s name, but which the father suspected was written by another person. In this letter the writer asked that money be sent him and explained that his handwriting would not seem natural as his arm had been injured.

767 The letter of the father furthermore gave a careful description of the son, mentioning a mole on the left elbow, a disfigurement of the right thumb due to a felon, the absence of two molar teeth and also flat feet. All these characteristics were found on the corpse in the vault at Ardmore.

Now Detective Abrams set off to hunt up the New York cousin mentioned in the letter. This man, whose name was Bernhard M. Middlestaedt, had important information for the detective. Two men had called at his home saying Max Hoehne had authorized them to take away his trunk. Middlestaedt told them Hoehne had not left his trunk there. The next day one of the men appeared again with a letter purporting to have been written by Hoehne, directing that the trunk be given to the bearer. This aroused Middlestaedt’s suspicions, as Hoehne certainly would know his trunk was not at Middlestaedt’s.

The detective and Middlestaedt then traced Hoehne’s movements after he had left his cousin’s house. They learned he had lived for a time in a lodging house and had pawned his trunk, then going to Philadelphia.

Abrams also interviewed the German consul in New York. Here were further interesting revelations. The consul had received a letter dated March 11, 1877, asking that any letters addressed to Max Hugo Hoehne be forwarded to Kings County Prison. The letter which the father in Berlin had received requested that the reply be addressed to the care of the German consul in New York.

Next Abrams and Middlestaedt went to the Kings County Prison. One of the prisoners there was a man who had given the name of Max Hugo Hoehne and who was under sentence of a year for robbing a drug store. As soon as Middlestaedt was taken to the cell of this man he saw the prisoner was not Hoehne. By dint of much questioning on different days the man finally was brought to admit that he was known both as Henry Wahlen and John Keller; that he had known Hoehne but could tell nothing about his death, but after his disappearance had decided to impersonate him in order to obtain money from his father.

In a room which Wahlen had occupied before his arrest Hoehne’s trunk was found. Presumably Wahlen had recovered it from the shop where the owner had pawned it. Wahlen also had Hoehne’s diary, from which the detective concluded he had obtained information used in letters he wrote to Hoehne’s father. Middlestaedt came to Ardmore and identified the corpse as that of Hoehne. Thereupon, on May 31st, the coroner’s jury completed 768 its inquiry, finding that Max Hugo Hoehne had come to his death “between October 15 and November 30 from violent blows on the head inflicted by a person or persons unknown,” and that Henry Wahlen was an accessory to the act.

Efforts were now directed to tracing Hoehne’s movements in Philadelphia. Abrams learned that one of Hoehne’s companions had been a Dane named Carl Thompson. Abrams found Thompson in Williamsburg, New York. Thompson recognized the body as that of Hoehne and identified the shirts. He told of Hoehne’s association with Wahlen, or Keller, and also another man, a peddler named Adolph Strepolski. Strepolski was located and was found to be wearing trousers that had belonged to Hoehne. In Strepolski’s trunk were found handkerchiefs, a razor strop and other articles which Thompson said had been in Hoehne’s possession.

Strepolski was committed to prison in Norristown and charged with Hoehne’s murder. He was ready to talk. He said that on October 16 or 17, 1876, Hoehne, Henry Wahlen and himself were drinking together in Philadelphia when Wahlen concluded to walk to Reading to try to get work, and the two others went with him as far as Elm Station. It was dark when they arrived there. They sat down to rest on the embankment alongside the railroad. As a train passed Strepolski said he heard a yell from Hoehne, and, looking up, he saw Wahlen beating Hoehne on the head with a hammer.

Hoehne was left lying where he fell. Wahlen and Strepolski spent the night in a nearby corn field. In the early morning they buried Hoehne’s body in the embankment. Strepolski declared Wahlen had compelled him to assist under threat of meeting a fate like that of Hoehne. Before burying the body they stripped off the clothing, appropriated what money it contained, then washed the clothing and wore it.

At the request of District Attorney Gotwalts, the governor of New York pardoned Wahlen, and on August 2, 1877, he was brought to the Norristown prison. Mr. Gotwalts also cabled to the father of the murdered man, in Berlin, asking him to come to Norristown at once. He did so, arriving on August 29th.

The trial of Wahlen began on September 10, 1877, and the father was an early witness. He broke down and wept as he identified a photograph of the murdered man. Strepolski narrated his story as he had previously told it. Hoehne’s thumb, with the marks of the felon, was offered in evidence, Squire Pearce having 769 cut it from the body. A piece of the skull where it had been struck with the hammer was also produced in court.

The trial continued morning, afternoon and night from Monday, September 10th, until Tuesday, September 25th. The district attorney, Jacob V. Gotwalts, was assisted in the prosecution by William Henry Sutton, who had been retained by the Lower Merion citizens’ committee.

After being out for three hours, the jury found Wahlen guilty of murder in the first degree.

While an appeal to the Supreme Court of the State was pending, Wahlen committed suicide in his cell on February 23, 1878, by first beating his head with an iron grating and then hanging himself with a bedsheet. Strepolski pleaded guilty to being an accessory in the murder after the fact, and he was sentenced to serve a year in prison and pay $500 fine.

At the grave of the murdered man, in the grounds of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Ardmore, the father had a stone erected, bearing these words: “Here rests in God Max Hugo Hoehne, born August 5, 1852, who, seeking to improve his condition, came to America and was murdered near Elm Station, P. R. R., October 16, 1876. Erected by his parents.”

"How a Murder Mystery Was Solved in 1877" is an excerpt from the Montgomery County chapter, by Edward W. Hocker, of J. Bennett Nolan, editor, Southeastern Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, Lewis Historical Publishing, Inc., 1943), Vol. II, pages 766–69. There is a facsimile of all three volumes online and a physical copy in the Gladwyne Library's Pennsylvania Room.

Another re-telling, graphically entitled "Frozen Foot Murder", is in the Main Line Chronicle's 75th Anniversary of Narberth Commemorative, 1970 (PDF, page 36).