The String Art That Is My Mind About This...

Of course, rereading the book has started my mind heading down some familiar roads, but this time there is a difference. I've come up with some thoughts and questions that I never have before.
Shortly after I woke up, showered and got ready for work, I took a few minutes to pull out the copies, from microfiche, of the Lancaster newspapers coverage of Marian's disappearance, the discovery of her mutilated body at the Harnish cottage, the confession, the trial and conviction and ending with Ed Gibb's execution in the electric chair.
I clearly remember the day I made those copies. I sat in the library on Duke Street for hours, reading and scanning the microfiche. I scanned so quickly that the motion of the reader made me dizzy and so nauseated I really thought I was going to be sick.
My husband was with me that day. We weren't married yet, so that tells you how long ago that day was. He had to drive home, I was fit for a bucket.
We were parked on the very top level of the parking garage, the Prince Street one, I think, I'm not exactly sure. I always park on the very top. I love looking out over the city every time. That view never gets old for me.
I remember telling my "boyfriend" to keep me away from the outer wall. There would be no gazing out over the Red Rose City that day for sure.
My copies of the articles are pretty worn. They are at least 30 years old!
Like my copy of "A Murder In Paradise", I always know where that stack of shiny black and white paper is.
I keep it in a special legal brief carrier.
It took me all of two minutes to find it this morning after I poured my first cup of coffee.
I read what I could still make out, and I found a few things that either I never noticed before or skipped over. Some are small details. Some directly contradict the book.
The photos of Marian and her Conestoga family, the aunt and uncle that raised her are very difficult to discern after all these years. There is one photo in which her brother Ross Dalton Baker Smith is standing next to the O'Donels. There is a photo of Marian, smiling broadly, with Edgar Rankin, her fiance, holding her from behind.
There are even photos of the jurors in a group around a table. Their names were published easily and it was said later that those people paid a very high price for their service on the Gibbs jury.
Some tormented them badly for their verdict.
There is also a wide aerial shot of then Route 222 and the land surrounding the Media Heights Golf Course, Mill Creek and the Harnish cottage.
From the time I started working in the area of Lancaster and south, I never drove that general route without looking to my left and wondering if I could find the spot where Ed attacked her.
As a small child, I remember being at a school friend's house on a lane in that area. I think I even wondered then. I'm forty nine years old and I can remember going up the wooded lane to Jack's house, and feeling rather serious for no apparent reason.
I was usually working second shift when I headed toward Willow Street and there was no time to head off on a search through the woods. I wonder now how built up that area is.
I viewed it on Google Earth and there is still Exhibit Farm Road. And a house appears. I don't know it to be a fact but I've wondered if that is the tenant house on the Harnish property from where the Harnish's called the police when they found Marian's body under the corrugated metal behind the cottage.
There are some coincidences that occurred to me today.
Marian lived right down the road from my Mom's childhood home, the home of my Nanny Kelley.
Once I had learned about her, there wasn't a day went by that I didn't look for her house as we drove to and from Nanny's house in Conestoga.
The Harnish's lived in the three hundred block of West Walnut Street in Lancaster and owned the property by Mill Creek. My family lived five houses west of them when my parents purchased the townhouse near the corner of Walnut and Mulberry.
Ed Gibb's wife worked with my Mom at Armstrong Cork Company, later Armstrong World Industries.
Marian was a good friend of my maternal aunt and my Mom.
It was only today that I realized that the Harnish's lived right down the street frpm our house.

In going back over the details as presented in the book and in the Lancaster Newspaper articles, I've started to form a mixed up list of questions in my mind. Tomorrow they will be comitted to paper.
I regret, more than I can say, that I never questioned anyone in my family about that tragedy.
I am sorry I never met Marian's brother Ross Dalton Baker Smith.
I am sorry I never met the O'Donels who cared for her and loved her as if she were their own. She was their own.

My Mom's best friend was a legal secretary for most of her life. Her years on Lawyer's Row, on Duke Street gave her a first hand glimpse at some of the most fascinating cases in Lancaster.
When the final opinion was handed down in the Lisa Michelle Lambert case, by Judge Lawrence Stengel, my Aunt Jean, as we called her, sent me the entire opinion :)
I pored over every word. I should mention that in my senior year of my undergrad studies I did interview for law school. Lawyers and judges are rock stars to me.
I am one of the weirdos that doesn't hate jury duty. When I enter a courthouse, I keep my voice to a whisper, lower my head a bit and show reverence. That's just me :)
I wish I would have spoken to her about the Baker murder and the Gibbs trial. She knew things. She heard plenty. But in all the years I was old enough to comprehend anything, I never once heard her reveal anything out of confidence in any area or in any way.
I can remember, though, her talking about Gibb's defense attorney, Hense Brown, long after the trial was a memory. She said that it was common knowledge that "Hense was NEVER the same." That was reiterated in the book.
He took his unease and frustration of the Gibbs trial with him to his grave.
He never stopped believing that if he just would have more time, he might have gotten Gibbs to tell the whole truth about what happened that cold January Tuesday in 1950.
There WAS more to the story. There IS more to the story.
And I'm not getting any younger here. If I don't give this my best shot now, I never will.

I looked back over my notes that I've written about the murder and the case for years. The one note card is dated from my middle school years.
I'm going to be updating those cards. Adding comments and questions in an effort to try to map out where I should go from here.
I have questions now that I didn't have back then.
I'm wondering about events and decisions from a much older, mature and worldwise stance now.
I'll be posting my progress and my thoughts here as I go.
I'll try to NOT present it haphazardly as string art. But there's always that risk.
When I start to write, it just goes where it goes. It's freeform and it leads to other thoughts and other questions, other memories.
This won't always be a cohesive work of literary research, you can count on that!
It will be my journey to try to find out just what really did happen to Marian Louise Baker in 1950.
My first question today was...
Marian was quoted as having said that Gibbs incessant chatter about himself made her sick.
Why did she get in the car with him after she left the post office?
Why was it okay with her to take a drive south instead of heading back to campus?
If she truly didn't like Gibbs, and this was in 1950, other rules of propriety applied then, why did she allow him to drive her south out of the city, back a wooded lane, when she was wearing Ed Rankin's engagement ring?
Do not assume I'm thinking that Marian was promiscuous. Not for a second.
But I am going somewhere with this. I just don't exactly where just yet.

I do need more information. I need records and data.
One piece of information I do need is a list of all the courses that Gibbs took while at Franklin and Marshall College. I need to see each and every class he registered for. Even those that he eventually dropped or failed.
And I need to see which professors were actually standing in front of students on that Tuesday afternoon. I need to see which professors could be accounted for that day. And which ones may have been off campus with no one to stand as their alibi.
I also will be visiting the Lancaster County Historical Society soon. They have the files, the evidence that remains, the collection that was the Baker murder and the Gibbs trial.
Richard Gehman, the author of the book, stated at the end that he hoped the reason for writing the book was in the pages. He really didn't know he was compelled to write the book.
I think he knew exactly why he was writing the book. And I believe there are vague clues in those pages.
Gehman told the story as it happened, as it was reported and accepted.
But I think he knew more. I think he knew alot more.
And I believe he was hoping that someday, someone was going to read certain lines and phrases in his book and cock their head just a tad to the side and say..."Hmm...I wonder...." .
Well Mr. Gehman, I hope you're watching. My head is a tad to the side. And I'm more than wondering.