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| Mary Mamon, Philadelphia Daily News photo, Sept 15, 1978 |
Mary Mamon knew what it was like to be the subject of gossip and accusations. She'd been through it herself .... twice ... 30 years ago. Now the nightmare was starting up again only this time it threatened her son Robert's happiness. Why couldn't people mind their own business? Someone needed to have their mouth shut.
And so it was, on the morning of March 23, 1967, that Mary Mamon set out to lure Ethel Markham to her death. Mary was pretty sure that her old bowling team partner Ethel, the aunt of Robert's (now former) fiancé Mary Ann Martin, was the chief muckraker.
Knowing Ethel would never agree to meet with her, Mary forced her way in to the house of Lorraine Mullery. The Mullerys had the misfortune of living several houses away from the Markhams; they weren't embroiled in this drama at all until that day. Mary beat Mrs. Mullery to death with a hammer then telephoned the Markham house, disguising her voice and claiming to be Lorraine. Mary Marmon asked that Ethel come over. There was an urgent matter they needed to discuss regarding some anonymous obscenity-filled phone calls and poison pen letters that had been circulating. All of which, unsurprisingly, were later linked back to Mary herself.
Ethel came over a little too quickly though. As Ethel was knocking on the front door, Mary was dealing with 11-year-old Donald Mullery. Ethel knew someone was in the house because the TV was blasting but when nobody answered her repeated knocking, she went back home and reported this oddity to her 12-year-old daughter Nancy. Nancy thought perhaps her mother had gone to wrong house. After all, it was she who was friendly with the Mullerys, not her mother. She decided to go over there herself.
Twenty minutes later, 13-year-old Patricia Mullery, returning home after church services, opened her front door and found her friend Nancy in a pool of blood. Nancy was unconscious but alive. Doctors would determine she'd been struck as many as 15 times on the back of her head with a hammer; part of her brain was exposed. Then she found her mother's body. Lorraine Mullery was dead from three solid blows to her head. Understandably, Patricia ran from the house screaming. The police were called and it was then the Donald was found. Donald would live but he'd never fully recover from the multiple blows to his head and he was later institutionalized.
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| photo courtesy of The Philadelphia Inquirer |
The police had a few good clues including the phone call from Lorraine Mullery to Ethel Markham plus a neighbor who had spotted a suspicous character entering the Mullery's garage about 30 minutes before the fatal phone call. This individual was described as male, 20-30 years of age, 5' 7", 160 pounds, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a hunting cap with ear flaps.
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| Philadelphia Inquirer photo, April 3, 1967 |
Ordinarily, Mary might not like to be mistaken for a burly man but on this day it worked in her favor. Nobody was immediately looking for a 49-year-old housewife. She had time to flee, with her son Robert's help, to another state just as suspicion was falling on her. Police would have to wait 6 days for Nancy Markham to regain consciousness and identify her attacker, which she did.
Mary was eventually located in Alabama, where she'd been given sanctuary in a convent, and one year later she was finally extradited back to Pennsylvania and made to stand trial.
But what was all the gossip about? What ghosts from Mary Mamon's past were coming back to haunt her?
Mary Mamon, formerly Mary O'Connor or alternately "Tarzan" to those who wished to allude to her boyish athleticism, had her first brush with scandal in 1937 at the age of 19.
The scandal was two part. Mary O'Connor and Marie Phillips nee' Kibler, who represented the US as part of the gymnastics team in the 1936 Olympics, had been accused of engaging in immoral acts while working as counselors at Philadelphia's Camp Happy. A camp trustee named John Joseph Tunney claimed he saw them kissing.
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| Marie Phillips nee' Kibler |
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| Mary O'Connor and Marie Phillips, summer of 1937, Beach Haven NJ - Daily News -Mar 13, 1938 |
Tunney was later discredited when his own criminal history (7 arrests resulting in 6 convictions for larceny, disorderly conduct and indecent behavior) was revealed. He later refused to testify in open court, was brandished "a contemptible liar" by Magistrate Jacob Dogole and threatened with perjury. Another worker, Joseph P. Costello, testified he'd found nothing unusual about the girls' behavior. Marie Phillips and her husband Chester denounced the claims as "shameful lies."
The charges were dropped, the case dismissed.
However, there was a much more serious and tragic charge facing Mary - homicide.
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| photo courtesy of The Pittsburgh Press |
Police were initially baffled but to everyone except Nancy's family, who pressured the Mayor & police to investigate, it seemed like an accident. An autopsy revealed water, mud and pebbles in Nancy's lungs and the cause of death to be drowning. However, even if Nancy accidentally hit her head and fell into that mudhole, who was it that put a heavy sheet of metal over the body?
The guilt caused Mary O'Connor to crack. She drove to New Jersey and confessed what she had done to her friend Marie Phillips then checked herself in to a sanitarium. Marie Phillips chose not to turn her friend in because "it wouldn't bring Nancy back." She shared this information with only her husband Chester and Mary's father. Marie would later face criminal charges as a result of her loyalty and be held as a material witness.
It didn't matter though, by now Mary was freely confessing to anyone who'd listen. She was arrested on November 21, 1937 at her grandparents' house in NJ.
Mary's version of events is all we have to go on. Mary testified that Nancy "got on my nerves and I hit her" with enough force to knock her down. She checked Nancy's pulse but detected none; thinking the girl was dead, Mary tried to cover up the crime. Sadly, Nancy was still alive when Mary deposited her body into the mudhole and even if she had regained consciousness, the metal sheet was too heavy for a 5-year-old to shift.
Mary had run into Nancy's mother on September 7th as Mrs. Glenn was searching for her missing daughter. When asked if she'd seen Nancy, Mary replied "No."
The February 1938 murder trial was swift because Mary didn't deny she'd been the cause of Nancy's death but, after 14 hours of deliberations, the jury wasn't convinced the District Attorney had proven it was "voluntary manslaughter" so Mary was acquitted. People were outraged and rightly so. Even the jury thought it was a miscarriage of justice. They felt hampered by the options available to them; they blamed the Prosecutor, the police for the inferior job during the initial investigation and each other. The O'Connors were delighted with the verdict.
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| NY Daily News photo, March 13, 1938 |
In 1943, Mary married Maurice Mamon, a man 13 years her senior; they had three sons of their own and adopted a fourth but separated around 1957. Mary and her three sons relocated to Levittown, PA in 1958 in a house purchased by Mary's father. When Maurice filed for divorce he stated that Mary had "a violent temper and uncontrollable fits of anger."
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| NY Daily News, January 18, 1970 |
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