Author: Bill Lofquist

James Kelly, Daniel Denny, and John Richards, all single men working as glassblowers, probably at the Aetna Glass Works, went out drinking in their Lawrenceville neighborhood on October 7, 1857. After stopping at a few taverns, Kelly suggested that they go to the nearby home of Wilhelmina Weissman, whom Kelly described as a prostitute.

Weissman lived with her elderly father, Henry, in a dilapidated home on the estate of Philip Winebiddle, a wealthy landowner who allowed the Weissmans to live free of charge.

Scion of a prominent founding family with significant landholdings in East Pittsburgh, as a young man Philip Winebiddle killed an unnamed enslaved man and fled efforts to arrest him. He was later tried for murder and “acquitted after a tedious trial of fifteen hours.”

Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette, November 19, 1816

When no one answered the door at the Weissman residence that evening, Kelly, Denny, and Richards let themselves in and went to the bedroom where Wilhelmina and Henry slept. Awakened by the intruders, Henry fought the men while Wilhelmina ran for help. When she returned, she found her father had been seriously injured. Henry Weissman died the next day. Richards, Denny, and Kelly were arrested on October 8.

Kelly, 20-years old and single, was tried first; his trial began on January 12, 1858. At trial, he claimed that Weissman was a prostitute he had patronized previously and that he and his friends were merely interested customers when they were forced to defend themselves.

After a defense that emphasized Wilhelmina Weissman’s bad character and sexual immorality (including claims that she was pregnant, unmarried, and syphlitic), Kelly was convicted of first-degree murder on January 16. After his motion for a new trial was rejected, he was sentenced to death on March 9, 1858. Denny was convicted of manslaughter and Richards was acquitted.

At the time of Kelly’s original trial, Fife, Jones, Stewart, and Lutz were awaiting execution. The Pittsburgh Gazette of January 18, 1858, wrote “Our jail has never presented such a spectacle to the eyes of the world as at present and we trust it never may present such an one again.” On the same day, the Daily Post wrote “We blush to record the dreadful tragedies for which the community now stands resposible (sic). Fife, Charlotte Jones, Stewart, Lutz and Kelly, with the dismal prospects of others being added to the column. We have no heart to enter upon the discussion of the causes of this fearful increase of the devilish spirit of murder; neither do we desire to reiterate the horrible details of this terrible result. It is enough to contemplate that cold-blooded murder – a total disregard of the value of human life, has been considered a trifle in this region, by bullies and street corner ruffians.”

On appeal, on July 15, 1858, Kelly’s conviction was reversed and he was granted a new trial (Kelly v. Commonwealth, 1 Grant 484, 1858). The reversal was granted due to the court’s concern that the circumstances of the offense mitigated Kelly’s premeditation, raised the issue of self-defense, and, in the absence of a clear intent to rape, did not rise to the level of first-degree murder. Specifically, Kelly had been charged with felony (rape) murder, yet his intent to rape had not been established and could not be used as a component of the charge if Wilhelmina had fled before the killing occurred.

Kelly’s second trial began on November 30, 1858. He was convicted of second-degree murder on December 2, 1858, and sentenced to eight years and nine months in Western Penitentiary.* After serving all of that sentence, Kelly was discharged on September 2, 1867. He died in Pittsburgh in 1914.

Wilhelmina Weissman died in Allegheny General Hospital on May 8, 1899.

* Kelly was the first death-sentenced defendant to serve time in Western Penitentiary. By the time he arrived, the famed Western Pen, a once-promising testimony to the failed belief that prisons could serve as beacons of “moral architecture,” was already on its second (of three) iterations. The idealism surrounding prisons at the time was one reason that the death penalty was not used more frequently. That most murderers were young white men of Northern and Western European ancestry was another important moderating factor. Only two (Jewell and Fitzpatrick) of the thirteen (Honeyman, Moode, Dunn, Lutz, Kelly, Keenan, Lynch, Murray, Meyers, Linkner, Abernathy) white men sentenced to death for fatal assaults involving white victims before the late 1800s were executed. Sounding this note, the Pittsburgh Daily Post in 1858 also wrote that “the humanity of the age forbids [making] the laws more stringent” before concluding that “the best defense is not punishment but prevention.” As the profile of the offender changing later in the century, use of the death penalty increases accordingly.

In a remarkable reprise of the Frecke and Marschall, Myers and Murray, and Linkner cases, all recent felony murders of recent German immigrants by their countrymen, Martin Weinberger killed Louis Gotfreund on June 16, 1882. His nude and decomposing body was found in the bushes on the side of the road two days later.

Weinberger and Gotfreund, German Jewish immigrants working as peddlers or “roving junk dealers,” as was common among German immigrants at the time, were traveling in a remote area near Sewickley when Weinberger robbed and shot Gotfreund and fled with his horse and wagon, goods, and cash. Gotfreund, newly arrived and unmarried, was not identified until ten days later, when an uncle living in East Liverpool, Ohio, responded to a newspaper description of the victim and was able to identify his exhumed body.

Based on descriptions provided by witnesses, Weinberger was arrested on July 1, 1882. By that time, the stolen goods had been sold and the money deposited in a bank account in Youngstown. He claimed that Gotfreund had committed suicide and that he tried to conceal the act by removing Gotfreund’s clothes and hiding his body.

With a strong evidentiary case against Weinberger and an “exceedingly weak” (Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette, January 6, 1883) and implausible defense, Weinberger was convicted of first-degree murder on January 6, 1883.

Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette, January 8, 1883

After a lengthy delay caused by the efforts of Hungarian authorities, friends, and family to prevent Weinberger’s execution, he was hanged on September 2, 1884, after having confessed from the gallows.

Martin Weinberger is believed to be the first Jewish person executed in Pennsylvania.

Robert McConkey was part of a gang that robbed Hendrickson & McClure’s Hardware in McKeesport, on July 31, 1881, stealing a large and valuable cache of knives and guns. Two days later, store owners George A. McClure and Wilbert Hendrickson, as well as Joseph Lynch and George Fleming, traced the gang to a bend on the Monongahela River known as Dead Man’s Hollow, near where Fife and Jones had committed double murder nearly twenty-five years earlier.

When they confronted the gang, McConkey, only 19 years old and already with a criminal record, shot and killed McClure. He and his accomplices then fled. A sizable reward was offered for their capture. Reports that they would be lynched were widespread.

Months later, in January 1882, McConkey was found in jail in Little Valley, Cattaraugus County, New York, where he was serving time for theft, and returned to Pittsburgh.

At trial the following month, Hendrickson, Lynch, and Fleming as well as other witnesses identified McConkey as McClure’s killer. His defense, that this was a case of mistaken identity, failed. McConkey, poor, fatherless, illiterate – “[f]ew persons raised in this country of free schools know less,” remarked the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette – and already well down a wayward path, was convicted of first-degree murder on February 15, 1882. His motion for a new trial was rejected and he was sentenced to death on February 25.

McConkey’s appeal, which challenged the veracity of the witnesses and raised a series of technical points, was likewise rejected (McConkey v. Commonwealth, 101 Pa. 416, 1882).

In the days before his execution, newspaper accounts expressed sympathy for McConkey’s youth, his quiet demeanor, and his many disadvantages.

Ward McConkey was executed on May 10, 1883. Due to the unusually high level of public interest created by both the notoriety of the case and the compassion shown to the young white killer, a large fence was erected around the jailyard to obstruct the view of onlookers.

Described as a model prisoner, brave all the way to the gallows, McConkey declared his innocence to the end. His final words were “Good-Bye, murderers.”

Pittsburgh Daily Post, May 11, 1883

About the execution, the Pittsburgh Daily Post wrote: “The moral effect of the execution on the criminal class or those whose steps are verging toward criminality may be safely placed at about zero….We doubt if it has any, or is anything else than the vengeance of society….One valid reason is left…the protection of society. This is tangible ground and one can understand it. McConkey will murder no more. That much has been accomplished by the execution. As a deterrent power on the criminal class we doubt the efficacy of the gallows. There is too long an interval between the crime and the penalty, to say nothing of the uncertainty of the punishment….”

Though the case remained in the news for years with reports of sightings of McConkey’s accomplices, no other arrests were ever made.

Dead Man’s Hollow is now a designated conservation area protected by the Allegheny Land Trust, though its reputation for mystery and violence remains.

On the evening of November 11, 1874, German-immigrant Frederick Myers and his companion, William Murray, robbed and shot German immigrant Gotthard Wahl in a remote area north of Pittsburgh. Like Frecke and Marschall before them, the companions who had reportedly come to Pittsburgh only days earlier, made their livings through crime. Like Foerster, Wahl, a father of seven, was chosen because he was traveling on an isolated road near Perrysville and appeared to be a man of some means.

Murray, the leader of the two, fired the fatal shot. Wahl died the next day. A man named Jacobs, who was traveling with Wahl, was injured but able to escape. Both victims were able to provide descriptions of their assailants.

After returning to their room at Mrs. Moore’s boardinghouse, 208 Third Avenue, Mary Kearns, an employee there who had heard of the killing, became suspicious of Murray and Myers and alerted authorities.

They were arrested on November 14.

Murray and Myers were convicted in separate trials in March 1875, and sentenced to death.  Though there was some surprise that Myers was convicted of first-degree murder despite his secondary role in the case, their convictions were sustained on appeal (Myers and Murray v. Commonwealth, 79 Pa. 308, 1875).

William Murray and Frederick Myers were executed on January 6, 1876, before a reported crowd of 500 people, said to have been the largest crowd ever to see a nominally private execution inside the jail. Murray is reported to have suffered a slow and lingering death twenty minutes after the trap was sprung.

Anthony Fiebiger was arrested on May 23, 1998, on drunk and disorderly charges. At the time of his arrest, he was living in a Goodwill treatment center and receiving alcohol abuse treatment.

Once in custody, he was questioned by police about the February 28, 1989, disappearance of his former girlfriend, Norma C. Parker, who was twenty years his senior. Fiebiger and Parker had lived together in Carnegie at the time and he had long been a suspect in her disappearance.

Putting up little resistance, Fiebiger confessed to police that he had strangled Parker, put her body in a 55 gallon drum, and buried it in Mingo Park, Washington County. Her body was discovered there by police on May 27, 1998.

He also confessed to the May 22, 1982 rape and murder of Marcia L. Jones, a teenager from Mt. Washington.

In that case, Fiebiger, who lived in Mt. Washington at the time, said he acted with accomplice Joseph Morton. They set out to find a woman to rape, enticing Jones to join them by offering her marijuana. They then raped and strangled her and left her body in a shallow grave in Grandview Park, where it was discovered that same day.

At trial for killing Jones, Fiebiger, a diagnosed sociopath, was found guilty of first-degree murder on March 1, 1999. The jury deliberated ten minutes before convicting him. He was sentenced to death later the same day. Rejecting the advice of counsel, Fiebiger then pleaded guilty to killing Parker without first obtaining a plea deal. He was sentenced to death in that case on June 30, 1999.

In 2001, Fiebiger ceased all appeals and sought to be executed. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court reviewed his cases despite Fiebiger’s wishes, upholding both convictions and death sentences (Commonwealth v. Fiebiger, 570 Pa. 583, 2002).

Anthony Fiebiger died on death row on April 4, 2022.

Joseph Morton is serving a life sentence for his role in the Jones murder.

Fiebiger was also implicated in a 1986 rape on Mt. Washington but was never arrested. He was arrested in 1991 for counterfeiting $20 bills in his work as a printer, for which pleaded guilty and served a 2 1/2 year federal sentence.