How soap led police to killers of Erie industrialist 81 years ago

Dubbed the “Hilltop Murder,” the 1945 killing of Joseph B. Campbell at his Millcreek home was “one of Erie County’s most atrocious crimes,” according to the Erie Daily Times.

A bar of hotel soap led police to the killers of a retired Erie industrialist in 1945.

Dubbed the “Hilltop Murder” in a national “Gang Busters” radio episode, the killing of Joseph B. Campbell at his Millcreek home was “one of Erie County’s most atrocious crimes,” according to the Erie Daily Times.

Two men confessed to the murder and were executed in March 1946. They had lobbied for life sentences or to be used as atomic testing “guinea pigs” instead.

The crime scene

Campbell, 73, lived alone on a small farm on the Waterford Pike, now upper Peach Street, “on a knoll overlooking the valley which embraces Kearsarge and the flying field nearby,” the Erie Daily Times reported on Aug. 6, 1945. The “flying field” was on farmland now occupied by the Millcreek Mall.

Campbell was an engineer with Erie City Iron Works and Hays Manufacturing before founding Campbell Brass Works at West 16th and Cascade streets. He also built the former 10-story Ariel Building at East Eighth and State streets and a mansion downtown.

He later lived full-time in the Millcreek farmhouse that he had built as a summer home in 1909.

Campbell’s bloodied and bound body was found in the farmhouse kitchen by daughter Ruth Van Cleve on Aug. 5, 1945.

“I was too shocked even to cry out,” Van Cleve said later. “I was stunned. I ran to neighbors. I even forgot about calling the police.”

Campbell had been beaten, his skull fractured in two places, according to autopsy results.

“The crime was one of the most brutal in the history of the state police,” the Erie Times-News reported on Aug. 6.

Campbell’s car, revolver and about $65 in cash were missing.

The telltale soap

The first major break in “one of the largest manhunts in the history of Erie County” came days later when Campbell’s car was found abandoned near Canton, Ohio, with a Michigan license plate on it. Campbell’s Pennsylvania plate and matchbooks advertising Michigan businesses were found inside the car.

Erie investigators went to Canton and found a bar of soap imprinted with the name of the Republic Hotel in Bay City, Michigan, in bushes near the car. In Bay City, the hotel register listed the names of two Williamsport, Pennsylvania, men who had stayed there after Campbell’s murder.

John “Jack” West, 27, and Robert “Bob” Pepperman, 29, had both been in and out of juvenile detention facilities, jails and prisons since age 14. They were taken into custody in Williamsport and quickly confessed to robbing and killing Campbell.

The “hardened and shifty-eyed ex-convicts” repeated their confessions for reporters when they were brought to Erie on Aug. 20. They re-enacted the crime in Campbell’s home the following day.

Repaying kindness with killing

Three days before the murder, West and Pepperman told Campbell that they were hitchhiking to Pittsburgh and were hungry, according to their confessions.

Campbell gave them sandwiches and berries that they ate outside.

The men returned Aug. 1, 1945, waiting near the home until dark. They then knocked on the door and said they’d lost a fountain pen on the property. Campbell got a flashlight to help in the search and was attacked when he returned to the door.

He “put up a hell of a fight,” Pepperman said.

The robbers ransacked upstairs bedrooms and took the cash, revolver and suits that they later wore in place of their bloodstained clothing. They drove Campbell’s car to Canada, crossed back into the U.S. at Detroit and made their way through Michigan and Ohio before returning home to Williamsport.

West and Pepperman pleaded guilty following their indictment on the murder charge on Aug. 31.

‘Path of evil’

Erie County District Attorney Burton Laub successfully argued that Campbell’s killing, during the course of a robbery, was first-degree murder, punishable by death.

“They have chosen the path of evil as against the path of decency,” Laub said of the killers, and committed “one of the most atrocious and cold blooded crimes in the history of our county.”

Defense attorney Elmer Loose argued that the men’s upbringing and home lives led to their crimes and that they should be sentenced to life in prison, not death.

Judges Elmer Evans and J. Orin Waite weighed the evidence, including the first recorded confession ever played in Erie County court, and sentenced West and Pepperman to death in September 1945.

The killers were “professional criminals” and “a menace to society, waging war on it for profit,” the judges said in their ruling. “By mercilessly beating and leaving to die an old gentleman who had been so kind to them, they have indicated viciousness and cruelty of heart and mind.”

Loose unsuccessfully appealed the sentence to the state Supreme Court and the state Board of Pardons.

Atomic ‘guinea pigs’ and jailhouse romance

West and Pepperman resigned themselves to die, but not by electrocution, as ordered. Both men volunteered to be “guinea pigs” for U.S. atomic testing instead.

Authorities passed on the offer. A Times-News columnist applauded it. If the military “blew them to pieces,” he wrote, “the state would save about two cents worth of electricity, the $350 the executioner receives for pulling the switch and the wear and tear on the sheriff’s tires when he moves them to the death house.”

Held at the Erie County Prison until March 23, 1946, West and Pepperman received few visits from family. The public, though, clamored to see them, wanting to assess their mindsets or to read poetry and even perform magic tricks for the condemned.

One visit that was allowed was by Alda Palmatier, a Williamsport woman who told reporters that she was a friend of Pepperman’s and had come to love him since Campbell’s murder. A photograph of the couple kissing through the bars of Pepperman’s cell was printed in the Erie Times-News days before his execution.

‘Two thousand volts of surging electricity’

A Times reporter attended and reported on the executions at Rockview Penitentiary near State College shortly after 12:30 a.m. on March 25, 1946.

West died first. He watched as guards snapped clamps across his chest and attached an electrode to his left leg. Then came the death mask over his face and after that, the current.

When it was switched off, a priest “stepped forward, anointed the chest with holy oil as the final step of Extreme Unction, and over the body made the sign of the cross.”

Pepperman was executed minutes later.

“Two thousand volts of surging electricity early Monday put a final period to the last chapter in the long criminal careers of John Darius West and Robert William Pepperman,” the Times reported.

On June 8, 1946, when the nationwide “Gang Busters” radio crime show detailed Campbell’s murder and the investigation that led to his killers, it was said to be the first time in radio history that a recorded confession by a killer was broadcast.