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Uncharted Lancaster
Uncharted Lancaster reveals the county’s most fascinating stories—local history with odd twists, forgotten places, and the occasional brush with the supernatural. Each episode explores the hidden histories and long-buried secrets of Lancaster County, where legend, landscape, and local lore collide.
Uncharted Lancaster
Doc Zimmerly’s House of Horrors
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This episode explores the disturbing true story of Harry Clifford Zimmerly, a disgraced doctor whose rural farmhouse in southern Lancaster County became known as a 1930s “house of horror.” Plagued by alcoholism and illegal medical practices, Zimmerly operated a makeshift hospital under filthy and dangerous conditions during the Great Depression.
In 1935, the disappearance of Gladys Lawson exposed the full extent of his crimes. Investigators discovered that Zimmerly had dismembered and incinerated her remains to conceal a botched operation. The episode follows the sensational trial, the shocking testimony that sealed his fate, and the lingering questions about whether other victims were never found, leaving behind one of the region’s darkest criminal legacies. Read more at UnchartedLancaster.com
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Uncharted Lancaster’s Ghosts, Monsters, and Tales of Adventure takes readers on a 283-page spine-tingling journey through Lancaster County’s haunted history, eerie legends, and hidden treasures. From ghostly apparitions to outlaw loot, these 64 true local stories blend real history with gripping folklore.
You know, there is a specific uh a tactile feeling that comes with October.
SPEAKER_00Oh, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02The air gets that sharp crisp bite to it, the leaves start to turn that burnt orange color, and culturally we all sort of collectively agree to enter spooky season.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_02We cue up the horror movies, we visit the haunted hayrides, and we tell ghost stories.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell It's a fascinating psychological ritual, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00We actively seek out fear. We want the adrenaline spike of the jump scare or the creeping dread of a ghost, or because at the end of the day, we know it's safe.
SPEAKER_01Exactly.
SPEAKER_00You can turn off the TV, you can walk out of the haunted house.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. It's a controlled scare. But I've been sitting with this stack of documents you sent over for this week's deep dive, and I realized something. Well, something unsettled me. The stories that actually keep me up at night aren't the ones about poltergeists or demons. It's the monsters that live next door.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_02The ones that have a respectable job, wave at you in the morning, and have a darkness just rotting them from the inside out.
SPEAKER_00The banality of evil, that concept that the most horrific things can happen in the most mundane settings.
SPEAKER_02That is the perfect framing for where we are going today. We're looking at a story that, on the surface, feels like a script for a slasher movie. I mean, we have a location dubbed the House of Horror.
SPEAKER_00Right out of the gate.
SPEAKER_02We have a 13-foot spite fence, and we have a furnace that holds terrible secrets. But when you dig into these court records and the sensational newspapers from 1935, you realize this isn't a ghost story.
SPEAKER_00Not at all.
SPEAKER_02It's a tragedy about a system that failed, a community that looked the other way, and a man who fell from the very top of society to the absolute bottom.
SPEAKER_00And took innocent people down with him. That's the key. This isn't just about one man's decline. Yeah. It's about the collateral damage of that decline.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell, So we need to set the map. We are heading to a place called Mechanics Grove in East Drumore Township. Now, before we even get into the geography, we have to address the elephant in the room regarding the pronunciation.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yes.
SPEAKER_02Our sources were incredibly emphatic about this.
SPEAKER_00The great Pennsylvania Shiboleth.
SPEAKER_02We are in Lancaster County. But if you say Lancaster, you might as well wear a neon sign that says, I am a tourist. Please overcharge me for a quilt.
SPEAKER_00Precisely. The locals and the historians we referenced make it very clear. It's pronounced Lancaster.
SPEAKER_02Lancaster.
SPEAKER_00Almost like you're kissing someone. Lancaster.
SPEAKER_02I will do my best to respect the local dialect. So set the scene for us. Mechanics Grove in the 1930s. This isn't a bustling metropolis. This isn't Philadelphia or Pittsburgh.
SPEAKER_00Oh, far from it. This is deep rural country. Historically, since the mid-19th century, Mechanics Grove was barely a dot on the map.
SPEAKER_01Really?
SPEAKER_00It was a cluster of homes, a few essential businesses to service the farmers, and that's about it. It's the kind of place to find by rolling cornfields, Amish buggies on the shoulder of the road, and a very slow, deliberate pace of life.
SPEAKER_02It sounds idyllic. It sounds like the kind of place people moved to specifically to get away from trouble.
SPEAKER_00It was. It was quiet, insular, and very traditional. It's the last place on earth you would expect to find yourself in the middle of a national media circus. And yet, in 1935, that's exactly what happened.
SPEAKER_02And it all centered on one specific property. Imagine walking down a dusty country road in this friendly village. You see open yards, porches, neighbors talking, and then suddenly a barricade, a massive wooden wall.
SPEAKER_00The spite fence, 13 feet tall.
SPEAKER_02That visual hook is so strong. You don't build a 13-foot fence to keep a dog in. You don't build it for decoration. No. You build a wall like that to keep the world out.
SPEAKER_00It creates an immediate physical boundary between us and him. It signals to the community that whatever is happening behind those planks is none of their business. Of course. But of course, that only makes people more curious.
SPEAKER_02Today we're going to breach that fence. We're going to tear down the boards and look at the mechanics of Grove Farmhouse of Horror. And to understand how this house became a horror show, we have to understand the architect of that horror.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Dr. Harry Clifford Zimmerley.
SPEAKER_00And this is where the story gets tragic before it gets gruesome. Because if you were to meet Harry Zimmerly in, say, 1900, you wouldn't see a monster. You would see a titan of the community.
SPEAKER_02Let's unpack his resume because the fall from Grace is Steve. He wasn't some back alley hack his whole life.
SPEAKER_00No, absolutely not. He was born in 1868 in Beaver County, Pennsylvania. And by 1894, he had graduated from the Cleveland University of Medicine and Surgery. Wow. We should pause on that. Because a medical degree in 1894 was a ticket to the upper echelon of American society. Doctors were revered figures.
SPEAKER_02So he was legitimate, highly educated.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Yeah. He settles in Pittsburgh. He marries a woman named Edda Bond, and they have five children. Five kids. He's checking every single box of the American dream. But it wasn't just medicine, was it? He had his hand on the levers of power. Oh so he was deeply embedded in the political machine. He was a member of the Democrat City Committee in Pittsburgh.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so a local player.
SPEAKER_00A very influential one. And this is a detail that really stood out to me in the research. He was an alternate delegate to the 1908 Democratic National Convention.
SPEAKER_02Wait, really? The DNC? The DNC. That is huge. That is the national stage. That means he was in the room where presidents were being picked.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. It implies a level of trust, connections, and social capital that most people never see in a lifetime. He even ran for city council in the 15th Ward.
SPEAKER_02And he win.
SPEAKER_00He lost. But the sheer audacity to run tells you he saw himself as a leader. He was established in every sense of the word.
SPEAKER_02So how do we get from the Democratic National Convention to a filth-ridden farmhouse in Lancaster County? The sources point to a timeline of unraveling that starts around 1914, and it seems to be the classic tragic slow-motion car crash of addiction.
SPEAKER_00It's the demon in the bottle. Alcoholism appears to be the primary catalyst. Around 1914, he abandons his family.
SPEAKER_02Just leaves them.
SPEAKER_00Leaves Eda and the five kids and abandons his practice in Pittsburgh. He starts drifting. He moves to Philadelphia, then to a town called Nottingham to take over a practice from a doctor Anderson.
SPEAKER_02But the problems followed him.
SPEAKER_00Oh, he couldn't outrun the addiction. The reports from this era are just chaotic. He's crashing cars, he's getting arrested.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that 1917 DUI incident is it's something else.
SPEAKER_00It's particularly telling, isn't it? This isn't just he had a few too many at dinner. He crashed his car into a horse-drawn wagon and a team of horses driven by an East Nottingham farmer.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell I think that image, the automobile smashing into the wagon, is such a potent metaphor for him. He's this modern, educated city doctor literally colliding with the rural traditional life he is trying to hide in.
SPEAKER_00That's a brilliant observation. And the police report adds the exclamation point to that crash. When the farmer went to check on the driver, he found Zimmerley, quote, drunk as a skunk.
SPEAKER_01And there was something in the car with him.
SPEAKER_00Sitting right there on the passenger seat. A gallon jug of whiskey.
SPEAKER_02Wow, that is not recreational drinking.
SPEAKER_00No.
SPEAKER_02That is maintenance drinking. That is, I cannot function physically without this substance in my blood.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. But then you hit 1918, and this is where the listener might feel a pang of sympathy, or at least understanding of the trauma involved.
SPEAKER_01The death of his son.
SPEAKER_00Henry, his eldest boy. He was only 17 years old.
SPEAKER_01So young. What happened?
SPEAKER_00He was riding a bicycle in Pittsburgh and was struck and killed by a car.
SPEAKER_02Oh, that's just heartbreaking. So you have a man who is already self-medicating with gallon jugs of whiskey, who has already blown up his marriage in his career, and then he loses his firstborn son. That is a psychological breaking point for anyone.
SPEAKER_00It accelerates the decline. Grief without a support system is a dangerous, corrosive thing. He didn't have his wife, he didn't have his friends from the DNC, he just had the bottle.
SPEAKER_02And that is the state he is in when he finally lands in the Mechanics Grove farmhouse. That's right. He moves into this old property. And here is where the spooky season vibes really kick in, because even before he turned it into a house of horrors, the locals thought the place was weird.
SPEAKER_00Local lore is powerful. The house already had a reputation for being haunted.
SPEAKER_01Of course it did.
SPEAKER_00Then this erratic alcoholic stranger moves in. He claims to be starting a hospital or a sanitarium, but the neighbors noticed something strange immediately. Which is you rarely saw patients leave.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's a that's a bad sign.
SPEAKER_00You saw people arrive, usually at night, usually in distress, but you rarely saw them walking out the front door.
SPEAKER_01That is incredibly ominous.
SPEAKER_00It is. The locals knew something was wrong. They tried to run him out of town, essentially through social pressure. And that is when Zimmerley built the fence. The spite fence. He didn't try to integrate. He put up that 13-foot spite fence to block their view. He was telling the community, stay out.
SPEAKER_02But the walls couldn't keep the secrets in forever. And this brings us to the first major legal warning sign. This wasn't just about drinking anymore.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02There was a scandal in 1919 regarding his housekeeper, Mary Hannah.
SPEAKER_00This is a disturbing chapter that really highlights the predatory nature developing in him. Mary Hannah was a teenager. Zimmerly was arrested for his relationship with her. The allegations were horrific.
SPEAKER_02I saw in the notes the district attorney actually used the word slave.
SPEAKER_00He did. A slave in the charging documents.
SPEAKER_02That is a legally loaded term, especially in 1919.
SPEAKER_00It implies total control. He alleged she had been his slave for four years, starting when she was just 14 years old.
SPEAKER_02Fourteen?
SPEAKER_00She was 18 by the time of the arrest. The charges included statutory rape, abortion, adultery, basically the entire criminal code regarding morality at the time.
SPEAKER_02So he was grooming her. By modern definitions, this is a clear case of grooming and trafficking.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. He had promised to marry her, a common tactic to secure silence and compliance, but never did. Now here's where the legal system of the time gets frustrating.
SPEAKER_02Let me guess he gets off lightly.
SPEAKER_00He went to trial before Judge Landis in September 1919. The outcome. He was convicted only on the abortion charge. The rape charges dropped.
SPEAKER_02Why? Was it a lack of evidence?
SPEAKER_00It's unclear from the records, but it likely involved a plea deal or the difficulty of proving non-consensual relations when the victim had been in the house for four years. The courts in that era were often unkind to female victims of this nature.
SPEAKER_02So what was the sentence?
SPEAKER_00A sentence of one year in prison.
SPEAKER_02One year. For four years of abuse. That is a slap on the wrist.
SPEAKER_00And get this. Three days after that conviction, before he even started serving his time, he was arrested again. I wish I was. He was arrested for non-support of his wife and, yet again, crashing his car.
SPEAKER_02Another one.
SPEAKER_00He overturned his vehicle on Church Street in Quarryville. The pattern of destruction was constant.
SPEAKER_02So he goes to jail, serves his year. You would think that would be the end of his medical license. You would think the state would step in and say, okay, no more scalpels for you.
SPEAKER_00You would think. But regulation was different then. He gets released in 1920, and briefly he manages to pull it together.
SPEAKER_02A moment of recovery.
SPEAKER_00A brief one. He remarries in 1922 to a woman named Viola Pepper, who, notably, was twenty one years younger than him.
SPEAKER_02He definitely had a type. Young, vulnerable women.
SPEAKER_00A clear pattern. But for a short window, he regained a reputation as a trustworthy country doctor. He was sober or sober enough and competent. But it didn't last. Tragedy strikes again. In 1924, his four-month-old son, Henry Joseph, dies.
SPEAKER_02Wait, he named another son Henry after the first one died.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Which speaks to the unresolved grief of the first loss and then to lose the second Henry. It seems to have been the final straw.
SPEAKER_01The final break.
SPEAKER_00He relapsed hard. But in 1926, he's getting arrested for public drunkenness again. His young wife, Viola, leaves him in 1927.
SPEAKER_02And this is where we have to look at the context of the era. We are heading into the late 20s, early 30s, the Great Depression is looming.
SPEAKER_00Economic desperation is a massive factor here. He's divorced, he is ordered to pay support, which he pleads poverty to reduce to just $6 a week.
SPEAKER_02Six dollars?
SPEAKER_00And he's forced onto government assistance. He is a former DNC delegate now living on the dole. He is desperate for money.
SPEAKER_02And when a doctor with a history of illegal operations and zero moral compass gets desperate for money in the 1930s, he returns to the one thing that pays cash up front and requires total secrecy. Illegal abortions.
SPEAKER_00Which brings us to the pivotal year, 1935. This is where the slow decline turns into a rapid free fall. We need to talk about Gladys Lawson.
SPEAKER_02Gladys Lawson. She is the central figure in the downfall of Dr. Zimmerley.
SPEAKER_00She is 26 years old, a mother of two from Calvert, Maryland.
SPEAKER_02So she wasn't a local Lancaster girl.
SPEAKER_00No, and that was common. Women would travel from out of state Maryland, Delaware, other parts of PA to find these services. They wanted anonymity.
SPEAKER_02They wanted to go somewhere where nobody knew their name. She was last seen on March 13th, 1935, visiting the Mechanics Grove farmhouse. Now we know about her condition because her family didn't just let her disappear.
SPEAKER_00No, they didn't.
SPEAKER_02Her sister is really the hero of this part of the story.
SPEAKER_00She is the driving force for justice here. She visited Gladys at the farmhouse.
SPEAKER_01And what did she find?
SPEAKER_00She found Gladys in bed in great misery, as she put it. Gladys told her sister, God knows when I can go home.
SPEAKER_02That is chilling. It sounds like she knew she was being held captive or that her condition was worsening beyond repair.
SPEAKER_00She was terrified. Gladys had told a friend, Beatrice Reynolds Trouble, that she thought Zimmerley was going through her purse. She feared he was going to rob her.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_00She felt trapped behind that spite fence.
SPEAKER_02So the sister leaves, but she keeps calling. For how long?
SPEAKER_00She calls repeatedly for two weeks.
SPEAKER_02And Zimmerly.
SPEAKER_00He stonewalls her every time. She can't come to the phone. She's sleeping. She's recovering. Finally, Mrs. Crawford has had enough. She goes back to the farmhouse to confront him in person.
SPEAKER_01And this interaction.
SPEAKER_00It tells you everything you need to know about Zimmerly's mental state.
SPEAKER_02Let me guess. He didn't invite her in for tea and crackers.
SPEAKER_00He met her at the door with a shotgun.
SPEAKER_02Okay. That is a massive neon red flag.
SPEAKER_00He threatened to shoot her if she didn't leave the property. That was the moment Mrs. Crawford went to the police and reported Gladys missing. She knew something terrible had happened.
SPEAKER_02And that leads to the raid. April 3, 1935.
SPEAKER_00The authorities descend on the farmhouse. We have County Detective Jacob Weller, Sergeant Ray Simmons of the State Police, and Constable Sweigart. They stormed the place.
SPEAKER_02And what they find? Well, they don't find Gladys.
SPEAKER_00No. They find her clothes, her green coat, her blue silk dress. They were just sitting in the office, draped over a chair.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But Gladys was gone.
SPEAKER_02Gone.
SPEAKER_00However, they did find someone else. And this is the part that emphasizes just how active this hospital was.
SPEAKER_02There was another girl there.
SPEAKER_0017-year-old Elsie Miller. She was found in a bedroom in critical condition. She had been subjected to three operations in a single week.
SPEAKER_02Three operations in one week.
SPEAKER_00It's barbaric. She was septic, she was weak, she was on the brink of death. The police rushed her to Lancaster General Hospital, and miraculously, she survived. Wow. But think about that timing. If Mrs. Crawford hadn't gone to the police about Gladys, Elsa Miller almost certainly would have died within days.
SPEAKER_02There would have been two bodies.
SPEAKER_00Correct.
SPEAKER_02And where was Zimmerly while the police are storming in and finding dying girls?
SPEAKER_00He was there, but he wasn't present. The police found him incoherent. Detective Weller noted there was no smell of liquor, which was highly unusual for Zimmerley.
SPEAKER_02So not drunk then.
SPEAKER_00They suspected he was high in narcotics. He was rambling, claiming he had driven Gladys to Lancaster days ago and dropped her off.
SPEAKER_02So they arrest him. And now the press gets access to the house. We need to describe this place because the nickname House of Horror wasn't just a catchy headline.
SPEAKER_00No, it wasn't.
SPEAKER_02It was a literal description of the condition.
SPEAKER_00He was a nightmare. Reporters and police were appalled by the filth. This was supposed to be a medical facility. It was an infection factory.
SPEAKER_02Let's paint the picture for the listener. Describe the operating room.
SPEAKER_00It wasn't a sterile room with white tiles. The operating table was a broken down reclining chair covered in soiled, dirty quilts that hadn't been washed in months.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's vile.
SPEAKER_00And right next to the patient's head, a spittoon full of tobacco spit.
SPEAKER_01No!
SPEAKER_00Yes. Imagine that. You are undergoing a dangerous medical procedure, and inches from your face is a bucket of tobacco spit.
SPEAKER_02That detail turns my stomach. It shows the utter contempt he had for these women. You don't put a spittoon next to a surgical site if you care about hygiene or survival.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Surgical instruments weren't in an autoclave, they were stuffed into random drawers with old newspapers and junk.
SPEAKER_02And living quarters were just as bad.
SPEAKER_00Worse. Dirty dishes piled in the sink, blood stained work clothes lying around, empty whiskey bottles everywhere, empty chloroform bottles on the floor. Chloroform. And fitting the violent nature of the man, the butt of a shotgun was sticking out of a pile of dirty quilts.
SPEAKER_02It sounds like the lair of a madman.
SPEAKER_00It was the lair of an addict and a predator. The cellar was filled with barrels of whiskey because, on top of everything else, Zimmerly was a bootlegger and a rum runner.
SPEAKER_02Of course he was. Why not add federal alcohol crimes to the list?
SPEAKER_00But the filth is one thing. The evidence of what happened to Gladys is where this story takes a turn into true gore.
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00And we have to rely on the testimony of the people around him.
SPEAKER_02Specifically, two people. Let's start with Blanche. She was a former nurse and housekeeper for Zimmerley.
SPEAKER_00What did she tell the police?
SPEAKER_02She testified that Gladys died on March 16th after a botched operation.
SPEAKER_00So a few days after her sister saw her.
SPEAKER_02Right. Blanche described hearing blood-curdling shrieks and groans coming from the room.
SPEAKER_00I can't even imagine. She said the moaning stopped at 12 30 a.m. Then Zimmerley came downstairs, looked at her, and simply said, She's gone.
SPEAKER_02She's gone. Just like that. No remorse.
SPEAKER_00Just a statement of fact. And the next morning, the body was gone. Zimmerly made Blanche promise to lie and say he had driven Gladys to town.
SPEAKER_02But the body didn't just walk away. And this where Richard Parker comes in.
SPEAKER_00Richard Parker, the handyman and bootlegger.
SPEAKER_02And we need to talk about the drugs because Parker mentions a specific cocktail they used called Twilight Sleep.
SPEAKER_00What was that?
SPEAKER_02Right. And this is important context. Zimmerly didn't invent twilight sleep in his basement. It was a legitimate, albeit controversial, medical trend in the early 20th century.
SPEAKER_00Really?
SPEAKER_02It was a combination of morphine and scopelmine.
SPEAKER_00Okay, break that down for us. What does that mix actually do to a person?
SPEAKER_02So the morphine handles the pain, that's the analgesic, but the scope almine, that's an amnesiac.
SPEAKER_00So you forget.
SPEAKER_02It doesn't necessarily stop you from feeling the pain in the moment, stops you from remembering it later. It creates a state of dissociation. That sounds terrifying. You're there, but you're not there.
SPEAKER_00In a controlled hospital setting with monitoring, it was standard for childbirth for a while. But in a filthy farmhouse administered by a drunk doctor and a heroin-addicted handyman.
SPEAKER_02It's a game of Russian roulette.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. The margin for error with scopalamine is razor thin. If you give too much, you suppress the respiratory system. You stop breathing.
SPEAKER_02And Richard Parker, the handyman, admitted to administering this.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Parker was a severe drug addict himself. And his testimony about what happened next is graphic.
SPEAKER_02He admitted to sharpening the knives, right?
SPEAKER_00Butcher knives. He admitted to sharpening butcher knives for the doctor.
SPEAKER_02Why?
SPEAKER_00He testified that he watched through a window as Zimmerly dismembered Gladys in the garage.
SPEAKER_01Dismembered?
SPEAKER_00Yes. Parker claimed that after the dismemberment, he smelled chemicals and burning flesh coming from the furnace.
SPEAKER_02The furnace.
SPEAKER_00He said Zimmerley burned the body to ash.
SPEAKER_02Parker himself sounds like a chaotic element in this investigation. Can we trust him?
SPEAKER_00That's the million-dollar question. He was an unstable witness. He was going through withdrawal during the investigation. At one point, he escaped the hospital where he was being treated, stole a milk truck.
SPEAKER_01He stole a milk truck.
SPEAKER_00Stole a milk truck, and was caught back at Zimmerley's house, desperately looking for drugs.
SPEAKER_01You can't make this stuff up.
SPEAKER_00He's desperate. So you have a missing woman, a drugged-up doctor, a handyman stealing milk trucks, and a house full of blood and whiskey. But here's the problem for the prosecution.
SPEAKER_01They don't have a body.
SPEAKER_00They know she's dead. They know he did it. But they have to find the body. You can't prosecute a murder easily without a body.
SPEAKER_02That is the corpus delictirol.
SPEAKER_00Correct.
SPEAKER_02Unpack that for us. It sounds like a Harry Potter spell.
SPEAKER_00It basically means the body of the crime. In 1935, under Pennsylvania law, it was incredibly difficult to secure a capital murder conviction if you did not have well, a body. You have to prove a death occurred. Before you can prove who caused it.
SPEAKER_02So the search for remains became a frenzy, and I mean a frenzy. They started sifting through the ashes in the driveway, right?
SPEAKER_00Yes. And they found bone fragments. Not a skeleton, but fragments. Enough to fill a cigar box.
SPEAKER_02A cigar box. That's all that was left of a 26-year-old mother.
SPEAKER_00That and a piece of a jaw with a tooth still in it. Oh God. And perhaps most disturbingly, they found tins filled with a waxy substance that forensics later identified as human fat.
SPEAKER_02Okay, that is truly horrific. He rendered her down.
SPEAKER_00It gets worse. Dr. J.W. Rice, a forensic expert from Bucknell University, analyzed the bones. He identified them as human, female skull, ribs, spine, and he Found saw marks on them.
SPEAKER_02Which corroborates the handyman story about the butcher knives.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. And there was another piece of circumstantial evidence. Zimmerly had ordered a huge amount of firewood in March. And you mentioned it was a warm month. Unseasonally warm. There was no need for that much wood to heat the house. Yet by the time of the raid, all that wood was gone.
SPEAKER_02He used it to fuel the furnace hot enough to cremate a body.
SPEAKER_00That was the conclusion.
SPEAKER_02Now, you mentioned earlier that this became a media circus. I want to talk about the public spectacle aspect of this. Because today we have true crime tourists who might go take a selfie outside a location, but this sounds like it was on another level.
SPEAKER_00It was pandemonium. You have to remember, this was the depression. People didn't have much entertainment. So when the newspapers dubbed it the Mechanics Grove Farmhouse of Horror, the public ate it up.
SPEAKER_02So people started showing up.
SPEAKER_00Thousands, literally thousands of sightseers descended on this tiny village.
SPEAKER_02In a farming village, the traffic must have been insane.
SPEAKER_00The traffic was reported to be thicker than on market day in Lancaster City. People were parking everywhere, blocking driveways, trampling the property, and they weren't just looking.
SPEAKER_02What were they doing?
SPEAKER_00They were souvenir hunting.
SPEAKER_02Souvenir hunting at a crime scene.
SPEAKER_00People were digging in the dirt, sifting through the mud, trying to find bones.
SPEAKER_02That is deeply morbid. It speaks to a dark curiosity in human nature.
SPEAKER_00It does. There was one report of a man from Maryland named Lawson, no relation to the victim, who was ecstatic because he was certain he had found a human finger.
SPEAKER_01Did he?
SPEAKER_00Well, here's the twisted irony. The pathologist, Dr. Keysby, eventually had to issue a statement. He announced that most of the souvenir bones people were finding and taking home were actually chicken and rabbit bones.
SPEAKER_02Chicken and rabbit bones.
SPEAKER_00The property was a farm after all. It was covered in animal refuse. But amidst that animal refuse were the actual remains of a human woman.
SPEAKER_02So the crime scene was completely contaminated.
SPEAKER_00Utterly. The mixture of the mundane and the macabre is what makes this so unsettling. You have people putting rabbit bones on their mantelpiece thinking it's a murder victim.
SPEAKER_02And there were rumors that Gladys wasn't the only victim.
SPEAKER_00Police suspected up to four other women had vanished there. Parker, the handyman, hinted at bodies plural.
SPEAKER_02Did they find anything else?
SPEAKER_00No. And this is important for the record. No other human remains were definitively identified. Just Gladys.
SPEAKER_02So we moved to the trial, June 1935. This must have been the trial of the century for Lancaster County.
SPEAKER_00It was. Zimmerley was indicted on eight counts. But the drama started before the opening statements. Richard Parker, our unstable handyman, went berserk in jail.
SPEAKER_02Berserk, how?
SPEAKER_00He tore up his cell. He was raving, screaming at invisible enemies. He had to be physically carried into the courtroom to testify because he couldn't walk on his own.
SPEAKER_02A key witness completely falling apart.
SPEAKER_00Completely. And then a juror fainted.
SPEAKER_02No.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Mrs. Hetty Grassle. The prosecution presented a box of bloody rags found at the scene as evidence. She took one look at the blood and collapsed.
SPEAKER_02So they had to stop the trial.
SPEAKER_00They had to declare a mistrial and select a new jury immediately.
SPEAKER_02It's like a movie script. You have the raving witness, the fainting juror.
SPEAKER_00It really is. The prosecution called over 20 witnesses. They had Arthur Smith, the man who drove Gladys to the farmhouse.
SPEAKER_02And what did he say?
SPEAKER_00He testified that Zimmerley told him, She died last night. I've got to get rid of it.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Ross Powell Dehumanizing her even in death.
SPEAKER_00Precisely. They had Blanche Stone testifying about the moaning. They had the forensics about the human fat and the bones. The case was overwhelming.
SPEAKER_02Did Zimmerley try to defend himself? Did he take the stand?
SPEAKER_00He offered no defense. He didn't say a word.
SPEAKER_02So what was his lawyer strategy?
SPEAKER_00His lawyer strategy was interesting. He basically argued that Zimmerly was a fall guy for a corrupt system.
SPEAKER_02A fall guy? How do you argue that when your client has a furnace full of bones?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell The lawyer blamed higher-ups and accomplices, like the friend Beatrice who sent Gladys there, or the driver Arthur Smith. He was trying to say, society created this situation.
SPEAKER_02That's a bold move.
SPEAKER_00It was a Hail Mary pass.
SPEAKER_02And did it work?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell Well, partially. And this brings us back to that corpus delecti issue.
SPEAKER_02Right. The lack of a full body.
SPEAKER_00The prosecution was terrified that if they went for first degree murder, a savvy appellate court would throw it out because they couldn't prove the specific cause of death was murder.
SPEAKER_02They couldn't prove intent.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Could she have died of natural causes during the procedure? Could she have died from the twilight sleep overdose? Without a body to autopsy, you can't prove intent to kill.
SPEAKER_02So if they can't prove he murdered her, they can't hang him.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. So they made a strategic gamble. They didn't charge him with murder. They charged him with death resulting from an illegal operation.
SPEAKER_02Which was a safer bet.
SPEAKER_00Much safer. It's the difference between swinging for a home run and bunting to get on base. They wanted a conviction they knew would stick.
SPEAKER_02And the verdict.
SPEAKER_00Guilty of performing an illegal operation resulting in death. He was acquitted of a separate charge of murdering a child related to the abortion itself.
SPEAKER_02So what was the sentence?
SPEAKER_00Seven and a half to fifteen years in Eastern Penitentiary.
SPEAKER_02That feels light considering he dismembered a woman and burned her to ash.
SPEAKER_00It does feel light by modern standards.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But for a man of his age, he was 67 at the time of sentencing, it was effectively a life sentence.
SPEAKER_02So Zimmerley goes to prison, but the story doesn't end there. We need to talk about the aftermath. What happened to the House of Horror?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell, this is one of those ironic twists that fiction writers would reject for being too on the nose. The house was sold at a sheriff's sale in 1936 to pay off Zimmerley's debts.
SPEAKER_02Who bought it?
SPEAKER_00Joseph M. Pepper.
SPEAKER_02Pepper? Wait, why does that name sound familiar?
SPEAKER_00That was the father of his second wife, Viola.
SPEAKER_02His former father-in-law bought the House of Horror.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_02That is bizarre. Hey Dad, I know my ex-husband murdered people in the basement, but it's a great investment property.
SPEAKER_00It speaks to the practical nature of rural life, I suppose. Land is land. It became a poultry farm later and eventually apartments.
SPEAKER_02So people live there.
SPEAKER_00For decades, probably unaware of what happened in that cellar.
SPEAKER_02And what about Gladys? What happened to her remains?
SPEAKER_00This is the most disrespectful part of the entire saga. Her family never claimed the bone fragments.
SPEAKER_02Maybe it was too painful or too expensive to transport.
SPEAKER_00Perhaps. But the state police, they did something that today would be considered absolutely inconceivable.
SPEAKER_02What did they do?
SPEAKER_00In 1936, the year after the trial, they took the bone fragments and Gladys's clothing. And they put them on display.
SPEAKER_02Where? In a museum.
SPEAKER_00At the farm show building in Harrisburg.
SPEAKER_02Wait. They put her bones on display at a farm show.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Alongside the prize-winning pumpkins and the cattle, it was labeled as an educational exhibit about crime detection.
SPEAKER_02That is grotesque. Come see the prize-winning pig, and over here, the remains of a murder victim.
SPEAKER_00It speaks to the sensationalism of the era. She wasn't treated as a victim, she was a curiosity, a carnival attraction. It's a heartbreaking final indignity for a woman who just wanted to go home.
SPEAKER_02That is heavy.
SPEAKER_00It is.
SPEAKER_02And Zimmerly, he died in prison.
SPEAKER_00He did. August 29th, 1942. He was 74, he died of heart failure. But his death brings us to the final mystery.
SPEAKER_02The dying words.
SPEAKER_00Right. He regained consciousness briefly before he died in the prison infirmary. And he muttered just two words, repeated twice. House. House. House.
SPEAKER_02What did he mean? Was he just thinking of home? Was he thinking of the place he lost? Or was he thinking of the secrets still buried there?
SPEAKER_00Because remember, the handyman said there were bodies, plural. And we know the search was chaotic, with tourists stealing evidence and mixing up bones. It is entirely possible that the full truth of what lies beneath the soil at Mechanics Grove was never uncovered. He took those secrets to the grave.
SPEAKER_02That sends a shiver down my spine.
SPEAKER_00As it should.
SPEAKER_02You know, we started this by talking about the spooky season, about ghosts and ghouls. But this story, this forces us to confront a different kind of horror.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. We look for monsters under the bed, but the real monsters are often people who have lost their moral compass, driven by addiction and greed.
SPEAKER_02A man who had everything.
SPEAKER_00Zimmerly was a man who had everything talent, family, political power, and he traded it all for a gallon of whiskey and a house behind a spite fence.
SPEAKER_01And the system failed those women.
SPEAKER_00It did. He had a record. He was known to be dangerous. But he was allowed to practice. He was allowed to prey on the vulnerable because in the depression, those women had nowhere else to turn.
SPEAKER_02So here's where it gets really interesting for you, the listener. The next time you drive past an old farmhouse with a high fence and you wonder what's behind it, maybe don't stop to find out.
SPEAKER_00Good advice.
SPEAKER_02And think about those dying words. House. House. If walls could talk, that farmhouse in Lancaster would scream.
SPEAKER_00And maybe, just maybe, it still has something to say.
SPEAKER_02On that disturbing note, we are gonna wrap up this deep dive. If you can, thanks for listening. We will catch you on the next one.