Is This What Is Meant By "Traditional Family Values," AFAofPA-style?
(Pictured at right is AFA of PA President, Diane Gramley)
"Amish Man Charged In Murder Case Now Dead"
from The Oil City Derrick:
An Amish man who brutally murdered and disemboweled his 29-yearold wife in front of their two children in 1993 was found dead Friday in a barn in Cambridge Springs, Crawford County.
Meadville state police said Edward Gingerich, 45, committed suicide by hanging himself in the lower level of a barn located on Miller Station Road, in Cambridge Springs.
Gingerich was pronounced dead at the scene by Crawford County Chief Deputy Coroner Scott Schell.
According to Schell, Gingerich had been staying with some friends, George and Stephanie Schroeck, at their residence on Miller Station Road.
Stephanie Schroeck told Schell that Gingerich had gone out to the barn around 10 a.m. to feed the horses. When she did not see Gingerich around the farm several hours later, she went searching for him, Schell said.
“She thought it was unusual that she hadn’t seen him around the farm all day,” Schell said.
Schell said Schroeck called 911 around 3:18 p.m. after finding Gingerich hanging in the barn.
In 1993, Gingerich became a household name throughout the region when he killed his wife, Katie Shetler Gingerich.
Gingerich confessed to pushing his wife down on the floor and crushing her skull. He then cut her stomach open with a kitchen knife and removed her organs. The couple’s 4-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter witnessed the entire incident, sources said.
In the highly publicized Meadville trial, Gingerich’s attorneys said Gingerich suffered from schizophrenia and thought he was possessed by the devil. Gingerich was on medication for schizophrenia but stopped taking it due to side effects. Reports also said that Gingerich sought treatment from a Cambridge Springs chiropractor named Merritt Terrell for six months prior to the incident, including just hours before the murder.
Gingerich was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter — the first Amish person in the U.S. to be found guilty of murder — but was deemed mentally ill, and sentenced to five years in prison under psychiatric watch.
Gingerich was released from a state regional correctional facility in Mercer on March 19, 1998, five years and one day after the murder.
Full details of the story leading up to the murder were detailed in the true-crime novel “Crimson Stain,” published in May 2000 by Edinboro University professor Jim Fisher.
Fisher and others said Gingerich struggled early on with the confines of the Brownhill Amish community in which he lived. Following prison, Gingerich spent the next 12-plus years struggling with life outside of the Amish community.
“Of course, he was shunned from the Amish community,” Schell said. “He was not allowed to live in that community any more.”
In 1998, Gingerich moved to a Mennonite halfway house in Michigan, where he worked for a sawmill. Sources said Gingerich was eventually kicked out of the Michigan enclave for undisclosed reasons and moved back to Pennsylvania in 2007.
Gingerich was back in the news shortly after his return to the area when he was arrested for concealing the whereabouts of his then 17-year-old daughter in April 2007. Both children lived with their grandparents, Daniel and Mary Gingerich, following the 1993 murder.
Gingerich pleaded guilty to charges and was sentenced to six months probation and ordered to pay $500 in fines. He was also ordered to cease contact with his daughter and other family.
In 2008, Gingerich was once again arrested, this time for illegally possessing and using a firearm while deer hunting. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge and served three months in Crawford County jail.
No comments:
Post a Comment