A shotgun fired through a window of the home of Susan Mummey on March 17, 1934. She was 63 when she died from the blast.
As the story goes, most of the town hated her…
You thought Salem was bad!?
Welcome to Ringtown!
THE FAMOUS WITCH OF THE RINGTOWN VALLEY
SUSIE MUMMEY was born in 1870 and was a wife and mother by her early 20s.
In the early 1900s, she married a second time, to Henry Mummey. No word on the first husband’s demise, but we sure know about the second one thanks to a violent death. More on that in a moment.
One of the most famous local fears in the 1930s apparently was Susie Mummey.. She had long occupied a large farm house at the valley’s foot.
Local legend claimed that she had psychic powers, and put them on display. Mummey reportedly had a vision of her husband’s violent death 20 years prior to it occurring.
People felt she was the “hex doctor” for her unique prediction of the demise of her Henry her spouse.
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I went to the witch doctor and this is what she said
On July 5, 1910, Susie Mummey had a dream that she would never see her husband again if he went to work. Henry ignored her cries to stay home and went off to his job, processing gunpowder for DuPont.
Henry died in an explosion at the plant that day.. It was this moment that created the legend of Mummey as a witch. Also helping in that narrative, she was most likely a practitioner of Pennsylvania Dutch Folk medicine, or powwowing–the use of herbs, rituals, and healing to ward off evil. That dates back to the middle ages in Europe, and the practice came to the shores of the new land in the 1700s with German speaking settlers.
Old local legend at the time said that Mummey possessed the “evil eye.” She also manufactured charms that hung in most of the farm houses and miners’ cabins at the time in Dutch Country.
THERE’S BEEN A MURDER!
Louis Buono was dubbed the ‘Sherlock Holmes’ of Schuylkill County in 1934. The morning of March 18, 24 hours after Mummey’s shooting, he got a call from her adopted daughter Tavilla. She told Buono about the killing.
Buono reported on the murder scene, Mummey’s body was pierced by “some missile” that entered her back and gone out through her heart, leaving a gushing wound two inches in diamter. The bullet was embedded into the wall. Germans at the time in Ringtown used the larger diametered bullets for deer hunting.. Oh and the “magic bullets” were also used for driving away evil spirits.
Of course, can’t forget them.
Jacob Rice was another house boarder at the location when the police arrived. Rice told detectives that at 11pm the night before, Mummey was making a powwow over Rice’s sore tow when a terrible explosion blasted through the glass of the front window and through her body–killed during her witchery!?
According to Rice and Mummey’s daughter Tavilla, both feared a further attack and waited until dawn to report the shooting to police.
Buona took his investigative skills and tried to determine who murdered Mummey.
According to reports at the time, Sherlock Louis began checking possible suspects. Many had decent alibis since it was a Saturday night, and St. Patrick’s Day.
Initial blame was placed on Paul Stauffer. He had a gun that might fire such bullets… and he often quarreled with Mummey over fences.
Buono arrested Stauffer. Stauffer said,
“Everybody knows I hated her. She hexed my mules so bad they’d balk and run away. Yes I have a gun that fires pumpkin bullets… but I didn’t kill her, though I often thought of it.”
Ballistic tests ended up proving Sherlock goofed in his findings. Stauffer did not do it.
WHO DONE IT!
The ‘magic bullet’ moment came about when Buono was just about to give up on the case.. just when a search of a neighbor’s barn yielded evidence of pumpkin slugs the exact same size as what killed Susie Mummey.
Albert Shinsky owned that location. And he was well known as someone who feared Mummey put a hex on him. When a trooper went to arrest Shinsky, there was a surprise moment, as reported by the Pittsburgh POST-GAZETTE on February 4, 1942:
The crime was solved..
Shinsky said that the Witch of Ringtown put a hex on him when he was 16..
He became known locally as the “Hex Slayer” in newspapers.
Shinsky confessed,
“I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t work, she hexed me so bad.” He blamed her for never being able to marry..
Eventually after trial, Shinsky was committed to the Fairview Hospital … It was declared “lunacy” made him do it.
On March 26, 1936, news services from Pottsville reported this about the HEX Killer: He was declared insane by Dr. Walter Bowers, a superintendent with the Schuylkill County Hospital for the Insane.
Thanks to those findings, he escaped the death penalty.. Papers at the time also showcased Selena Bernsteil, the girlfriend of Shinsky, who offered up a defense of her boyfriend saying that Mummey bewitched him..
But the story did not end with his committal to Fairview.
In 1976, Shinsky was set for a new trial. He never had one after all in 1934.
Shinsky petitioned the Schuylkill County court for a trial and hearings on his mental capacity. Judge James Curran at the time approved a trial.
But on March 11, 1976, the STANDARD SPEAKER reported that charge against Shinsky were dropped.
Shinsky was released and in 1976 was living with a relative.
In February of 1983 he was admitted to a nursing home in Shenandoah, and died three months later. He was buried at Our Lady of Fatima Cemetery in Shenandoah Heights. As for his former girlfriend, the killer’s fiance, she eventually married Charles Betterton and moved to Bucks County, despite promises to marry Shinsky when he was released.
Susie Mummey was not a witch.
She was a human being, killed by superstitious beliefs of the early 20th century.
The is folklore and history.
