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Herman Paul Schultz Historic Hanging
The Pike County Historical Society has the original noose used to hang Schultz; the handcuffs and shackles used to transport him; the murder weapon and ammunition along with original documentation regarding the case.
The following article is from an unknown source but appears to have been written around 1897. The printout of this article can be found at the Pike County Historical Society Column’s Museum. If you have any information regarding this article, please contact us with the source of the original article so that we can give proper credit where due.
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Prisoner hanged in Pike County Courthouse
One hundred years ago last Christmas Eve, a New York City man was indicted by a Pike County grand jury for murdering his wife at a Shohola resort.
Herman Paul Schultz was accused of shooting his wife, Lizzie, at Wohlforth’s High Point Farm in Shohola Township. His wife had given her name as Lydie Smith when she, accompanied by her 12-year-old son Paul, appeared at the Wohlforth establishment to ask for work. It was July 5th, the height of the summer boarder season, and she was given a job and proved to be a reliable and efficient worker. At the end of the season, on Friday, September 18th, Schultz appeared and after some evasion it was made known they were husband and wife and that he had supposedly come into between $25,000 and $35,000 from relatives in Germany. The couple was scheduled to leave for the city on Monday, September 21st.
However, that morning Mrs. Schultz was found dead in bed, shot through the temple with her husband’s revolver in her hand. Mr. Schultz claimed that she had shot herself. The county coroner, Lorenz Geiger, was called and assembled a coroner’s jury that ruled the woman had come to her death from a pistol shot at the hand of some unknown person. Schultz was in the Pike County jail very briefly and released.
He returned to New York City taking his gun with him. Coroner Geiger testified during the trial that his efforts to get local justices of the peace to take action were in vain. Metropolitan papers strongly criticized the county’s action, or lack of it, in the case.
Charles G. Carson, a New York lawyer who had been boarding at the High Point Farm at the time of Mrs. Schultz’ death took great interest in the case and was credited with working with Charles, the eldest of the three Schultz sons to have the father arrested in New York City. District Attorney Daniel VanAuken explained procedures in Pike County by stating it had been considered up to the prosecution and his friends or the relatives of the victim to furnish the funds for criminal prosecution. If they were not able to do so the prosecution was left to the “wise discretion of the county commissioners.” The commissioners in 1896 were Walter Newman, James H. Heller and A.S. Dingman. The following year, 1897, when Schultz went on trial, James M. Bensley had succeeded Dingman as a commissioner. The commissioners met in a special session on October 5, 1896 and issued a resolution “in favor of the full and rigorous enforcement of all the criminal laws in this county, to the end that all crimes perpetrated within the county shall be detected and the guilty parties punished and further call upon and demand that the proper officers having in charge the enforcement of all such laws shall perform their full duty: that all proper costs and charges in any such prosecution will be fully and promptly paid for by the said commissioners of Pike as soon as can be legally done.”
On December 24, 1896, Schultz was indicted by a Pike County grand jury. He was brought back to Pike County by Sheriff Henry I. Courtright and special deputy Charles P. Mott. Schultz was represented by court appointed attorneys John H. VanEtten and John A. Kipp. District Attorney Daniel VanAuken handled the prosecution. The defense moved to quash the charges as only 301 out of an ordered 350 names had been placed in the jury wheel and that seven of the names were those of non-residents and that the rights of the defendant would be prejudiced if compelled to go to trial at this time.
The President Judge, Charles S. Purdy, first sustained the objection but adjourned court until 2 p.m., when he overruled the objection. On June 9th the trial began with a twelve man jury consisting of ten farmers, one railroader and one carpenter.
The trial of Schultz, a 42-year-old German-born tailor and bartender, proved to be a story of family tensions, frustrations and hatred. His three sons, Charles, William and Paul, all testified against him as did Julia Dannenfeltzer of Brooklyn, a half-sister of his deceased wife. Their testimony presented a picture of a man of violent temper who had often struck and threatened his wife. The defendant continued to maintain his innocence and that his wife had shot herself with his revolver. During and after the trial the Reverend Benjamin S. Lassiter, of the Church of the Good Shepherd of Milford provided spiritual guidance to the prisoner.
Schultz is reported as having “highs and lows” in his attitude during the trial. At one time he was reported as saying mockingly “Thank you gentlemen for your verdict, Good morning” while passing the jurors after their verdict against him. At other times he refused to eat and on one occasion attempted to strangle himself.
The case went to the jury on Saturday, June 12th at 6 p.m. Eight hours later they returned a verdict of guilty. Efforts by attorneys Kipp and VanEtten to seek a new trial were rejected by Judge Purdy. He sentenced the defendant “to be hanged by the neck until you are dead”. Execution date was set for December 7, 1897.
The county was now faced with making arrangements for and carrying out the execution. On November 30th, in a special meeting the commissioners refused to change the location of the scaffold and employed Nathan Fuller to take a partition out of the second story of the jail to provide more light and cut a hole in the floor for the rope to pass through and make a box for the weight to drop in. Commissioners Newman and Heller rejected a motion by Commissioner Bensley that they be authorized to superintend the placing of the scaffold and weight. They agreed to meet at 9 a.m. on December 7th and go to the jail to check on arrangements.
Schultz was led into the execution chamber by Sheriff Courtright, Deputy William Drake and Jailer Lucien Hissam. He was also accompanied by Reverend Lassiter. Schultz read a final statement proclaiming his innocence, repeated the Lord’s prayer with Rev. Lassiter and a prayer in German from his Bible. At 11:18 a.m., at the command of the sheriff, the weight was released and the prisoner jerked into the air. An adjustment of the noose by deputy sheriff George C. Horton, at the request of the prisoner, resulted in the prisoner strangling and not having his neck broken. His body was sent to the state Anatomical Board office in Philadelphia and his request that his wife’s skull that had been exhumed as evidence in the trial be buried with him, was ignored.
Sheriff Courtright was both praised and condemned for his handling of the execution. A number of persons were admitted to view it in the limited space of the old court house. Others thronged the street outside the building in what some newspapers reported as a holiday atmosphere. The sheriff did reject a proposal to sell metal fragments from the drop weight as souvenirs and refused the request from women who wanted to view the execution. He did allow the body of the executed to be viewed publicly with death cap removed.
Law changes soon took place which decreed that when a death penalty was imposed the carrying out of the execution itself became the responsibility of the state and not of local officials.
