Next month, on the 10th of April, will be Marian Louise Baker's birthday. Had she not been brutally murdered south of Lancaster in the cold January air of 1950, she would be 81 years old this year.
Her brother, Ross Dalton Smith Baker, passed away in the summer of 2008. He spent most of his life without his sister to share in the memories.
Marian is buried next to her aunt and uncle, the O'Donels, in Perry County, Pennsylvania. It is so fitting that she should rest there, rather than beside her natural mother and step-father. Her aunt, Alice Soules O'Donel and her husband Leroy, raised and loved Marian as their own. Their grief draped over them the rest of their lives. For Marian's mother, Mrs. Bruce Britcher...not so much. She barely made it to Marian's funeral on time.
Marian and her brother had been given to relatives to raise at a very young age.
Ross was fortunate to have been raised by another sister of his mothers and lived a life of service and duty. He grew to be a fine man, loved and admired in the community.
Marian had hopes and dreams of becoming Mrs. Ed Rankin and raising a family of her own.
But those dreams ended with a cold iron lug wrench beating the lifeblood out of her not far from Willow Street on the afternoon of January 10, 1950.
Marian was employed as a cashier at F & M College and was running errands on the afternoon of her death. She accepted a ride from a student of the college, who she knew marginally.
Why she accepted the ride continues to baffle me. She had made her feelings about Edward Lester Gibbs clear in the past. He annoyed her and she was not fond of him.
Perhaps she was just glad for the ride. Maybe she thought it would be a faster way to return to the college.
I have tried to imagine what thoughts were running through her mind as they crossed the "Singing Bridge" at Engleside, already very far in the wrong direction from where she planned to go. Perhaps she was being polite at that point, not wanting to insult or offend Ed. But by the time they had crossed the bridge, did she start to feel any fear or apprehension?
Ed Gibbs testimony and relating of facts as to that day cannot be depended upon to be truthful in their entirety. So we continue to wonder.
Did Marian start to argue with him? Demand to be taken back to the school?
I find it very hard to believe that she was relaxed and calm, that far out of the way, with a student she disliked so. Did she begin to wonder what his true plans were?
Clearly when they turned left off of the highway and went back into the wooded area, things had to have started to seem a bit worrisome to her.
Marian Louise Baker was a friend of our family. She died many years before I was born, but my Mom and my aunt and grandmother knew her well. Her home, with the O'Donels was a short distance down the road from their house. Her picture was in their photo album.
At no time has anyone ever allowed for the possibility that Marian would have allowed any advances, no matter how slight, from Ed Gibbs. Nor would she have flirted with him for attention.
She was in love with Edgar Rankin. And planned to be his bride.
Edward Lester Gibbs killed those plans. He altered lives that could never be repaired.
Ed, himself, met death as a result of that afternoon. He died in the electric chair.
His wife, Helen, returned to New Jersey and was never publicly heard from again. She never attended the trial or issued a statement.
What really happened in that car on January 10, 1950? What really happened at the Mylin cottage near Willow Street?
And why did Ed Gibbs go to his death without telling the whole story? What on earth was there left to lose?
I'm working on those questions and several more.
0 comments:
Post a Comment