Cameron County press. [volume] (Emporium, Cameron County, Pa.) 1866-1922, 1899-07-27
FOREST HIDES A MURDER.
Mystery Of the Death of Wealthy
Lumberman John Rohn.
From Philadelphia Record.

L rom pllld iAtCold
LOCK HAVEN, Pa, July 23.-The
mystery surrounding the disap-
pearance of John Rohn, Sr., the
wealthy West Keating township lum-
herman, does not appear as near solu-
ton as week ago, when the authori-
ties discovered that Rohn had been
murdered. During the past week
ConstabIe r. A. Reid, of Remove, un-
earthed sufficient evidence against two
men to Justify him in swearing out a
warrant, but at a consultation held
with Judge Mayer and District Attor-
ney Mccormick, the Judge gave it as
his opinion that the arrests could not
be made until the body of Rohn, or
some portion of it, was found.
SOME STRANGE STORIES AFLOAT
1t is reported that woman named
Gaines, a cook at a lumber camp near
Block House, six miles north of the
Rohn place, one day last week discover
ed the scalp of a man along a noun
tain by-path. The scalp looked as
though il might have been torn of a
corpse by dog. When the officers
went to Block House to verify the
story, the grewsome find of the
Gaines woman had disappeared,
nobody knew where.
The startling rumor was afoat in the
neighborhood of the Rohn place that
on the night of April 6--the date of
Rohn's disappearance-a passer-by
saw the fire place under the boilers at
the Rohn saw mill aglow, and it was be-
lieved that the murderers ofthe old man
had burned his body up. This story,
however, is strenuously ly denied by
Mrs. Rohn, who is an invalid, and was
awake all the night after her husbands
failure to return home. The mill is
not two rods from the house, and Mrs.
Rohn says that nobody could have
| built fire in the mill that night with
out her finding it out.
LEFT VOUCHER BEHIND HIM.
The voucher which was supposed to
| be in Rohn's pocket when he disap-
| peared and was recently presented
| for payment at a Clearfield bank, Mrs
ROhn explains, was found lying on the
organ, in the sitting room, where Mr.
| Rohn put it several days before he dis
| appeared.
There is persistent story in ''Nig.
ger Kingdom" (the local name by
| which the community in which the
a young man named Smoke had a
! quarrel about a dead COW which Smoke
had dragged into Rohn's woods
! Searchers for Rohn also discovered the
peculiar wobbling tracks made by a
broken wheeled buggy belonging to
Smoke, in the neighborhood of where
Rohn was last seen. Constable
Reid called at the Smoke home to in
terrogate the young man, but the
latter was not to be found.
HAD MONEY WHEN HE STARTED.
The family of missing John Rohn
are strict adherents of the murder
theory. 1t is known that the old man
had at least $3.50 on his person when
he disappeared, and the woods, at the
edge of which he was last seen, extend
in a painless plateau for nearly fifteen
miles across the Alleghenies to the Sin.
nemahoning district. The body of the
old man could be hidden in this as eff
fectively as though buried in a fifty
foot grave. Searchers have been
watching the crows on this plateau,
thinking that these birds would find
the body.
Rohn was one of the wealthiest OF
upriver lumbermen, being the owner
Of about so, 900 acres of land which
though nearly denuded of timber, is
richly underlaid with bituminous coal