This article comes by way of Joe Nihen (morse73@ptd.net) who lives in Lansford, Carbon Co., PA and had the original article translated by a professor in Lebanon. If you have comments of questions, write to Joe. -------------------------------- From: Joe Nihen morse73@ptd.net Re: Newspaper account of the murder of Lorentz Ohrendorf. A Professor of German at Lebanon Valley College translated it for me. A copy follows: Lebanon, June 26, 1791 Dear Printers, You are requested to include the following terrible happening in your newspaper: Wednesday night on the 22nd of this month about midnight, a horrible murder was committed about two miles from the city of Lebanon, Dauphin County, in the home of one Lorenz Ohrendorf. According to sworn testimony, the circumstances are the following: the murderer had broken a small window in the house and climbed in by the same and tied shut the door to the living room (stube) in the ground floor in which Ohrendorf’s two sisters were sleeping. Thereafter the murderer went upstairs. In a side room the unfortunate Ohrendorf was fast asleep in his bed after having worked hard the day before. Here the murderer delivered several mortal blows to his head with a short-handled ax and then used a cutting instrument to slash his throat through to the bone. Following this he went back downstairs and after he had cut through the rope with which he had tied the door shut, he went into the living room (stube), where the victim’s two sisters had already hidden under the bed since they had heard the blows and their brother choking on his own blood. When the murderer now entered the room he had a lighted lantern in his hand which he used to look into the bed. Finding it empty, however, he then looked under the bed where the frightened women had hidden themselves. He ordered them to come out, which they did. He then ordered them to lie on the bed, which they, however, did not wish to do because they said he would murder them, too. But he replied that he only wished to tie them to it. During this conversation, the younger sister tried to escape through a window and the older grabbed the sword which the murderer had hanging at his side and tried to get it away from him. In the mean time, the younger sister did escape through the window and ran to get help from a neighbor. The older sister and the murderer meanwhile each had hold of the sword with both hands and she said that they struggled back and forth over it for half an hour until she saw a chance to escape and darted through the door to the stube. She ran to another brother who lived about half a mile away to give the alarm. The murderer, who now found himself alone and imagining that he had no time to steal anything, took his sword and the now extinguished lantern and ran off leaving behind the murder weapon and the rope with which he had intended to tie the women. It is thought that the person who committed the murder is a man who has worked in Lebanon as a butcher for many years, Matheus Weiß by name, formerly a member of the corps of Hessian scouts which had come to this country with the British soldiers. When he noticed that suspicion was beginning to fall on him, he made his escape on the following Friday night. He is about five feet six inches tall, has short, blond, curly hair and a rather bald head and has one or two stiff fingers on the left hand that he cannot close completely. He was wearing a light blue butcher’s coat. He made his way to Wyoming and from there presumably to Niagra. A reward of 80 Thalers has been posted for his capture and return. ----------------------------------------------------- What a wonderfully gruesome tale! I have scans of the original, if you'd like them.