The 9 biggest true crime cases in Pennsylvania history

Read about nine true cases of murder, robbery, and scandal in Pennsylvania.

Many Americans turn to podcasts and documentaries for true stories of crime and mystery. However, you can also turn to real cases from Pennsylvania’s history for a dose of true crime in our own state.

From unsolved murders to financial scams, the details of these cases are grim and often shed light on criminal motives or the failure of authorities.

1. The Philadelphia poison ring

The case of the Philadelphia poison ring is as bizarre as it is sad. In the early 1900s, Philadelphia’s Italian immigrant population soared—and the often poor and marginalized immigrants were vulnerable to con artists. Two such con artists were Italian immigrant cousins Herman and Paul Petrillo, who led a murder-for-profit gang in the 1930s that ultimately claimed the lives of as many as 100 people in Greater Philadelphia.

The scheme worked like this: the brothers had members of their gang pose as traditional healers and sell potions to unsuspecting Italian women, telling them the concoctions would help their husbands. Instead, the brews contained high levels of arsenic. The gang took out hefty insurance policies on the husbands, easily scamming men and women who often spoke little English, and collected the sums upon the husbands’ deaths.

The gang operated for years until Philadelphia investigators connected the dots; the Petrillo cousins were executed in 1941 for their crimes.

2. The American Jack the Ripper

Do you know why Jack the Ripper is the most famous serial killer in history? It’s not because of the number of people he murdered—it’s because the murders were the first to be widely documented by the news media, the first to be rapidly consumed by a public hungry for gory details. And the details were indeed gory—such is why serial killer and rapist William Dean Christensen was dubbed “the American Jack the Ripper.”

Christensen brutally killed at least four people in the United States and Canada in the early 1980s, though he may have killed many more while operating throughout Pennsylvania and Maryland, as Christensen was released from prison multiple times. He eventually received life imprisonment in Pennsylvania, where he was incarcerated until his death in 1990.

3. The Triple Six Fix

The Triple Six Fix was a plot to rig the Pennsylvania Lottery in 1980, led by a group of people that included the TV announcer for the lottery game and a state official. The scam involved weighting the balls in the three-number drawing, except for those with numbers the scammers wanted pulled (4s and 6s), virtually ensuring 4s and 6s would remain in the air and be drawn by the machine.

The fix was initially successful when “666” was drawn and announced, but the strange betting patterns for different combinations of the weighted balls made authorities suspicious. Most of the $3.5 million in winnings—$13.9 million today—was never paid out, and nearly all of the rest was recovered from the guilty parties, some of whom went to jail for the scheme.

4. The killer nurse

While working as a nurse in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley and New Jersey, Charles Edmund Cullen killed dozens of people over a period of 16 years by injecting patients with lethal doses of medication. He was able to escape scrutiny by moving to different hospitals, and though his record was suspicious, medical staff never reported him until officials at a Somerville, New Jersey hospital noticed disturbing trends in Cullen’s behavior and his treatment of patients.

Cullen admitted to killing more than 40 patients, but researchers suspect he may have killed as many as 400. A book about the case—“The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder”—was published in 2013 by journalist Charles Graeber. A Netflix movie based on the book premiered in 2022, as did a Netflix documentary about the case.

5. The real Buffalo Bill

Serial killer Gary Michael Heidnik terrorized women in Philadelphia in the 1980s. Between 1986 and 1987, Heidnik kidnapped six women and trapped them in a self-dug pit in his basement. He murdered two of them. When finally captured, Heidnik was deemed competent to stand trial and was convicted and sentenced to death. He was executed in 1999—as of this writing, the last person to be executed by the state of Pennsylvania.

Heidnik’s disturbing actions helped inspire the creation of the sadistic serial killer Buffalo Bill in the book and film “The Silence of the Lambs.”

6. The Biddle Brothers’ escape

In 1902, the escape of two prisoners at Pittsburgh’s Allegheny County Jail shocked the country. It wasn’t just that it was a prison break, but also the sordid details surrounding it; the inmates were aided by the warden’s wife, who had fallen in love with one of them. Soon after, brothers Jack and Ed Biddle were imprisoned at the Allegheny County Jail for robbery, the wife of the warden, Kate Soffel, became smitten with Ed. She not only helped the brothers make a daring escape, but she also joined them. The law, however, quickly caught up with them: The Biddle Brothers were killed in the confrontation with the cops, and Soffel returned to Pittsburgh, inspiring gossip for years until her death.

Does this case make you think of a popular Pittsburgh-area coffee shop—Biddle’s Escape?

7. The Pennsylvania Turnpike Phantom Killer

In the 1950s, truckers and travelers began to fear taking a break on the side of the road due to a serial killer stalking the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Western Pennsylvania. Known as the “Turnpike Phantom,” the killer was responsible for shooting three truckers sleeping on the roadside, all in the span of one week. Two of the truckers died—and there may have even been more victims never tied to the killer. But not long after the murders, and after a high-speed chase in New Mexico, the culprit—John Wesley Wable—was caught, convicted, and executed.

A book by journalist Richard Gazarik, “The Pennsylvania Turnpike Phantom Killer,” details Wable’s crimes and the panic his killing spree inspired.

8. An unsolved murder in Bristol

In 1962, 9-year-old Carol Ann Dougherty was brutally attacked and murdered inside a Catholic Church near her home in suburban Bristol. More than 60 years later, her murder remains unsolved. But advances in DNA technology could soon lead to a break in the case. In October 2024, the Pennsylvania State Police and the Bucks County District Attorney announced they were sending decades-old DNA to a research lab in Texas that specializes in cold cases. While success isn’t guaranteed, new testing combined with genetic analysis could lead investigators to the killer.

9. The country’s first bank robbery

You may not have seen a Netflix documentary about this Pennsylvania crime, but it’s still notable as the first bank robbery in the United States.

In 1798, during a yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia, two men stole $162,821—more than $3 million in today’s dollars—from the Bank of Pennsylvania at Carpenter’s Hall. Likely using a forged key during the early-morning heist, the perpetrators didn’t even need to break anything. Officials arrested Patrick Lyon, the blacksmith who had installed the bank vault’s locks, and imprisoned him for three months. The actual culprits were Isaac Davis, a carpenter at the building, and Thomas Cunningham, a bank porter.

Cunningham died of yellow fever not long after the robbery, while Davis was pardoned after he gave back the stolen money, never spending a day in jail. Read more about the case, and Lyon’s lawsuit against the bank and city constable, on the Carpenter’s Hall website.