An Invitation That Is Always Open

I particularly like this picture of Marian. She was at work at F&M, around 1948, Such a horrible tragedy.
I am aware that some of Marian's family that I have not yet met or spoken to are reading here. As you all must know by now, I am approaching this revisit with compassion, respect and a search for the final truth. Contact me as you feel comfortable. As others have learned, I do not betray trust. I hope to hear from you soon. I will continue to pray for Marian and for those who still love her dearly to this day.

The Story Keeps Revealing Itself

East Hall, the dormitory on the Franklin and Marshall College campus for married students was where Ed and Helen Gibbs lived. I wish it was still standing. I honestly believe that we all have an energy and leave an imprint. Ed Gibbs pathos was exuded within these walls under the guise of normal day-to-day life.

I have been lucky enough to encounter someone who may give me a first hand account of what Ed and Helen were like, much as  anyone could have known of them from living in the space. The details are what fascinate me. I suppose that I still believe that I will someday, somehow come upon some seemingly insignificant little fact that will stun me and give me an "Aha!" moment. I truly believe that will happen. There is something more, something I haven't uncovered yet.

I have been contacted by several people with intimate knowledge of Marian, of Ed and Helen and the various aspects of their lives and personalities. The rub is this. In the late 1940s and into 1950, this was a very different world from the one we live in today. Things that we are becoming used to were shocking and kept well from public view and knowledge. People were much more aghast at horrific happenings then. Surely murders happened. Affairs and other sordid events happened. But they were kept secret. Appearance was everything. Especially to families like the Gibbs and the Woodwards, and even the Bakers, Smiths and O'Donels. It fit all families of that time. Things just weren't open for reveal or God forbid, discussion.

But human nature hasn't changed. The less detail and explanation, the more we question and search for answers that make sense. I know that  sometimes logic isn't logical and that there are no answers for some crimes. But I also know that in far more cases, what makes sense to the common person is exactly what caused an event or resulted in one.

As one friend said to me very recently, what's important is that the truth be told and it will fall where it may.

I have been very biased in my research and to this day hold Marian Baker in the highest regard. I have not changed my mind about that. No new evidence has yet been uncovered to change my mind. But as I progress with my pursuit of the total truth of this horrific tragedy I have to now remain open to all and any possibility.  Falsehoods and errors will fall away until nothing but the truth remains.

There is a reason why this case is still creating such an incredible stir sixty-five years later. It is because none of us have heard or read the total truth or the whole story. Once the facts are uncovered that lead to incontrovertible truth, the story will close and only memories will remain.

As long as the truth keeps quietly tapping on the door, whispering permission to come in, I will keep trying to pry that door open wide enough for it to enter.

This has always been a Marian vs. Ed thing. It has been all-or-nothing. No matter what events took place or what details remain, Marian never deserved to be murdered. Period. Her murder was horrific, senseless and a total tragedy. Even I have seen this as extreme ends of the spectrum. It only recently has become clear to me that human beings don't sit well on the ends of a ruler. No one fits on the ends of the spectrum. No one.  Like a teeter-totter, all humans are somewhere in between, balancing life a little more on one end and  then a little more on the other. It is in sad and pathological cases like Ed Gibbs where a human sits a little too firmly on the unstable and dangerous end. And when another human gets too close or enters the aura of that pathos, tragedy can and usually does, ensue.

Many questions remain about the events that led up to the murder of Marian Baker. Some roll easily off the lips. Why did she get in the car with Gibbs? Easy answer is that she thought it was a quicker way to return to the campus. Harder question: Marian was quoted as saying that Gibbs "disgusted" her. Why then would she get in the car with him? Another query....Why didn't she get out of the car when she saw they were going to a remote area at the Harnish cottage? Short answer: She may have been uneasy but no one, especially in that time period, would really believe that danger was present. Harder question: The Harnish cottage was in a very remote location. It was a bleak and cold January day. What scenic experience was there to have? What countryside drive was there to be had on that route, in that location? If you have accepted a ride from a man who you state disgusts you, and he has convinced you that it's fine to take a ride before returning to campus and work, what reaction do you have when he ends up on a remote lane, in a wooded area on a stark and drab, cold day? Was she uneasy? Was she fearful prior to his reaching over to choke her? What did she really say to him to make him want to choke the life out of her.

We all have to remember that we only have Gibbs story as to what went on in that car that day in January. I have to admit, it makes less sense to me today than it ever has. It just doesn't add up.

Peeking Out From The Shadows

Marian Louise Baker would never have imagined that all these years later she is still remembered and still part of the local news. I wonder how she feels about that.



Marian Baker Not Forgotten To This Day

Why?

On Tuesday, January 1oth of 1950, Marian Louise Baker returned to the Cashier's Office from her lunch break in the college cafeteria. She never removed her coat as she sat down at her desk, complaining that she was now so backed up with work that she wished she didn't have to go to the bank. Making college deposits at the bank was a daily part of Marian's job duties. She grabbed her things, a letter to be mailed from Mrs. Stonesifer and her purse and headed to the corner of James and College Avenues to catch the CTC bus to Penn Square. She had returned to the office, from lunch at 1:30 pm.
She was worried that she would be late for or miss her appointment for a permanent wave scheduled for 5:00 or 5:30 that afternoon.
She also needed to pick up her engagment ring from Kay Jewelers, off of Penn Square.
Marian arrived at Penn Square. She picked up her ring, made the bank deposit and then went to the post office.
She hadn't wanted to make this run downtown because she was so backed up with work....
And yet, we are to believe that as she ran her errands, she ran into Ed Gibbs, whose incessant chatter about himself made her sick, and accepted a ride with him supposedly heading back to the college. That part I even have trouble with. He made her sick. That's a pretty strong statement. I can't imagine she wanted to listen to him chatter on the whole way back to campus.
But this is the bigger question for me....
As busy and backed up as she was at 1:30 pm, already worried about not making her hair appointment, when Ed Gibbs pulled up to the light at Prince Street, and he asked Marian if she was in a hurry to get back to the college campus, she said "No." She said NO?????
Ed made a left and they travelled down South Prince Street, clearly away from the direction of the college. It was a cold, gray January day. Not exactly the day for sightseeing. Or nature watching.
Why would Marian have gotten in the car with Ed in the first place if he made her sick?
And if she did get in the car, why was there no fuss about him taking her south of the city when she clearly was flustered about being so busy already in the afternoon?
When that car left the highway and started back the lane to where the cottage was located, why was there no problem, no fight?
He was married, she was engaged. It was the middle of the afternoon of a work day in 1950.
Something is very wrong here.
And why THAT lane? Why THAT property?
How did Ed Gibbs know of that area? Had he been there before?
Did Marian really get a ride from Gibbs?
What happened to her being so busy?
What was being said in the car as he shoved it into "park"?
He said he reached over and choked her with no provocation. He did it on impulse.
She screamed and got out of the car, trying to get away.
He grabbed the lug wrench and went after her.
If he snapped, why wasn't she obliterated?
If he simply wanted her dead, why the wounds on the frontal AND posterior surfaces of her skull? How did the attack happen? Either blow would have rendered her completely unconscious as bone was driven into the brain.
And then we are to believe that Gibbs came back later to try to bury her?
I have alot of work to do.
I need to check records and get myself up to the Historical Society.
I need to read the entire court transcript and see any surviving files from the investigation.
Was the inside of the cottage checked? What about Gibb's car? Was it examined inside?
Somethings aren't making any sense at all....

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.

Revisting "A Murder In Paradise"

I started to read "A Murder In Paradise" by Richard Gehman again last night. This has to be the hundredth time, if not more.
For a few months the book has been sitting on an end table in my living room. At no time in my life has it ever been too far away from me. I have no idea why I always keep it so handy and close.
When we moved here, it was packed in a box in the one spare bedroom for several months. When the very familiar pangs started up again, making me need to read it one more time, I remember frantically running up the stairs and heading for the packing boxes, stacked high to the ceiling, in many rows.
I knew instinctively what other items I had packed in the same box with the book, so when I popped the top on the fourth or fifth box and saw my grandmother's linen calendar folded and laying on top of the items, I knew I had the right one!
I also remember my husband telling me to do a search on the internet to see if anyone had an additional copy for sale. My copy is very worn by now. I did find two for sale. The prices were astronomical, at least for my bank account!
Inside the front cover of my copy, I had written my mother's name and address in ink. I clearly was attempting to copy her beautiful, flowing cursive, but failed lol
She had kept the book in a chest of drawers in her room that was reserved for some of her favorite and most cherished jewelry. My Mom was a glamour doll and her jewelry was her signature. That and her beauty mark :) (When she had almost a day's worth of surgery for head/neck cancer she awoke and was angrier at the surgeon removing her beauty mark without permission than she was worried about the surgery; that was my Mom!)
The book was kept in an elevated place in her mind and heart, and the fact that she kept it in the jewelry chest of drawers and not on the bookshelves with her hundreds of other books was quite telling. It has always been revered in our family.
My Mom never spoke much about the murder. She spoke only briefly in my presence of Marian.
But I overheard her a few times over the years speaking of Ed Gibbs. Her tone was strong and it was seething. "He said 'She was hard to kill. She didn't want to die.' " The words slid out of her mouth almost with a slight hiss. Over the years I would come to learn how much my Mom truly did harbor hate for Ed Gibbs. It seemed that if she spoke more of him she'd somehow make him more important in the universe than she wanted him to be.
Marian Louise Baker's photo was in an album at my Grandmother's house for as long as I could remember. I can still see her smile and her side pose in a white outfit. She had dark hair, dark eyes and an easy smile.
I clearly didn't recognize her as a member of our family, at least one that I had ever met, so I asked about the picture. "That's Marian Louise Baker, a friend of Aunt Weenie's." That's all that was said for quite a long time. But for some reason, even as a small girl, I always returned to that picture when looking through the photo albums. To this day I don't know why. It would be years before I knew what had happened to Marian.

The Marian Baker Murder

My research into Pitman, New Jersey, the hometown of killer Edward Lester Gibbs, led me to these photos and postcards. I posted them randomly.
I have been to Pitman once and plan to return. I want to get current photos of these locations and take some shots of the home where he grew up, the cemetery where he is buried.
In the meantime, this is what I have of the life history in visual form, of Edward Lester Gibbs.

This is where Ed graduated from high school prior to entering the service and then attending college at F&M in Lancaster, PA.

This is not the church where Edward Lester Gibbs married his bride, Helen. That poor woman had no idea what she had signed on for. Ed also reportedly worked for a while at the Esso Station that appears on the card.

The wedding reception the new Mr. and Mrs. Edward Lester Gibbs was held here at the Hotel Pitman. Nothing but the best for their son, some residents of the town felt that perhaps the Country Club would have been more fitting.

Another view of the Hotel Pitman.

I'll update with more photos as I get them, and also clearly lay out the timeline of Ed Gibbs life as it led him to the cold January afternoon where he beat the life out of Marian Louise Baker.