PA PA - Edward Hower Maps, 39, Stroudsburg, 21 June 1962

[Gardener1850]

[h=1]3928DMPA - Edward Hower Maps[/h]

Name: Edward Hower Maps
Case Classification: Missing Fugitive
Missing Since: June 21, 1962
Location Last Seen: Stroudsburg, Monroe County, Pennsylvania
[h=2]Physical Description[/h] Date of Birth: June 29, 1922
Age: 39 years old
Race: White
Gender: Male
Height: 5'6"
Weight: 160 - 170 lbs.
Hair Color: Gray or Partially Gray
Eye Color: Brown
Nickname/Alias: Unknown
Distinguishing Marks/Features: Sometimes wore a full beard & mustache, Schizophrenic
[h=2]Identifiers[/h] Dentals: Not Available
Fingerprints: Not Available
DNA: Availablee
[h=2]Clothing & Personal Items[/h] Clothing: Topcoat, Dungarees, Cossack-style cap
Jewelry: Unknown
Additional Personal Items: Sandals (without socks), often wore glasses
[h=2]Circumstances of Disappearance[/h] On June 21, 1962, at around 10:48, firefighters responded to a burning home at 510 Sarah Street in Stroudsburg. Inside, they found the unconscious body of 22 year old Christine Maps, wife of Edward H. Maps, and their 4-month old daughter, Julie Louise.
Christine and the baby were rushed to Monroe County General Hospital, where Julie Louise was pronounced dead on arrival. Christine died the following day of severe head injuries. Investigators found that the oven had been set to 450 degrees and the oven door had been left wide open. There were also about 10 fires that had been set throughout the house.
The two deaths were ruled as murders, with arson intended to conceal the crimes. Two cars owned by Edward Maps were parked by the house, his wallet and identification were discovered in the living room of the house, but he was nowhere to be found. Within hours of the fire, a warrant was sworn out, charging Maps with arson and homicide. He was almost immediately added to the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list, where he would remain for almost five years.
Several sightings of Mr Maps were reported over the years, from Maryland to Turkey to Mexico, but the most credible sighting came on August 7, 1962, when a lone gunman held up the Little Falls (NJ) Savings Bank. He was later identified from FBI photos as Edward Maps. Little Falls is located only five miles from Passaic, NJ, where Maps was born. Edward Maps was an artist and sculptor, well respected in the art world, who didn’t hold a regular job. Well known for his unusual manner of dress, he was often described as a “beatnik” who would go barefoot in the warmer months and would wear sandals, without socks, during the winter.
At 20 years old, he entered the Marine Corps and served during World War II. He was discharged as a schizophrenic. Whether he was actually schizophrenic or, perhaps, suffered from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), a term that had not yet been coined, his psychological condition was attributed to his wartime service. In 1967, Edward Maps was removed from the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list, at the request of the (then) Monroe County District Attorney. Maps was declared dead on October 21, 1971. The FBI reportedly destroyed Maps’ fugitive file in December 1977.
In 1972 the house, which had become a tourist attraction of sorts, called "Mystery House", was razed. A row of townhouses now occupies the land where the house once stood.
Edward Maps has never been located and the murders of Christine & Julie Louise remain unsolved
[h=2]Investigating Agency(s)[/h] Agency Name: Pennsylvania State Police - Troop N
Agency Contact Person: Cpl Thomas McAndrew
Agency Phone Number: 570-459-3890
Agency E-Mail: N/A
Agency Case Number: N/A
NCIC Case Number: Unknown
NamUs Case Number: 7194
[h=2]Information Source(s)[/h] NamUs
PA Missing Persons

http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/3928dmpa.html

https://www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/7194/

http://www.missingveterans.com/1962/edward-hower-maps/

 

[Gardener1850]

[h=1]46 years later, Maps murder remains unsolved mystery[/h]Jan 21, 2008

How Edward Maps disappeared so late at night in the winter was a mystery. His vehicles were left in the garage at his house. The Maps family had visited a neighbor that evening and left together at 9:05 p.m. in the “best of spirits.” One school of thought believes Maps must have had an accomplice to make a successful getaway.

A few days after the murder, at least two individuals in East Stroudsburg who knew Maps received phone calls from him. The woman was never identified because she claimed Maps told her, “You’re next.” The man, Henry Evans, told police he tried to persuade Maps to turn himself in, but Maps said he had things to do. Maps was the subject of an intense manhunt in the mountains near Stroudsburg that lasted for weeks, but the search provided no clues.

Maps attended college on the GI bill, majoring in art at Syracuse University. A 1968 newspaper account reported that he met his wife, the former Christine Wolbach, in Manhattan while he was teaching art and she was attending college.

A 1982 newspaper report indicated that a family friend said they met at an art exposition at Buck Hill Inn.
The Maps were married at Trinity Church in Mount Pocono by Rev. Thomas Shoesmith in August 1960. The bride’s father is reported to have objected to the marriage.

Strange things continued to happen in the Maps case. Different people claimed to have seen him in locations as diverse as the Bahamas and London, England.

Maps was known around the world because he was placed on top of the FBI’s Most Wanted List where he remained for nearly five years.

Flowers were placed on the graves of Christine and Julie Louise at the Dutch Reformed Cemetery in Bushkill on the day before the Map’s wedding anniversary in 1966 and no one knew who put them there.
The following year, the Monroe County District Attorney, James Marsh, requested that Maps be removed from the FBI’s Most Wanted list as of Dec. 1, 1967.
No explanation was given in news accounts for this action. Maps was declared legally dead on Oct. 21, 1971. Again, no explanation was given in news accounts for this action.

http://www.poconorecord.com/article/20080121/NEWS/801210331

 

[Gardener1850]

[h=1]Was Edward Maps innocent?[/h]Posted Apr 13, 2008 at 12:01 AM
Updated Apr 29, 2014 at 9:07 AM

Editor’s note: This is the final installment in a series of articles about an unsolved 1962 arson and double homicide in Stroudsburg. Previous articles were published on Jan. 21, 28 and Feb. 11.

The most notorious unsolved double homicide in Stroudsburg’s history might have a surprise ending.

Edward Howard Maps, long sought as the only suspect in the arson deaths of his wife and infant, may have been innocent.

Maps was accused of bludgeoning his 22-year-old wife, Christine Wolbach Maps, on the night of Jan. 21, 1962, and setting fire to their home at 510 Sarah St. to cover up his crime. He was further accused of leaving his 4-month-old daughter, Julia Louise, in the house to die of smoke inhalation. Maps was never seen again, though he was at the top of the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list until 1967.

The investigation into the Maps homicide was propelled by circumstantial evidence. The most damning evidence against Maps was his disappearance. A news article in the Herald Tribune of Passaic-Clifton, N.J. — Maps’ hometown — pointed out that Maps had no motive for the crime and nothing to gain by doing it. The Monroe County district attorney, James Marsh, told the newspaper he believed Maps found marriage and the burden of paying a mortgage intolerable after years of carefree existence. He conceded to the reporter that “it would have been much easier for Maps to simply walk out and begin a new life somewhere else.”
The state police investigation uncovered details about the parents of Christine Maps which were never revealed to the public, possibly to save her mother and father from embarrassment about their marital problems. Today’s police investigators would not ignore the Wolbach family’s domestic discord.

A four-page typed report written one day after the fire described Maps this way:“He is a complete sponger, lazy, insolent and nasty, is not friends with any past acquaintances and anyone who ever knew him does not speak well of him.”
The writer of the report also made a surprising conclusion about a 39-year-old father with a beautiful 22-year-old wife: “Quite sure he is a homosexual.”
Interviews with Maps’ friends and acquaintances portray a different man. He was described as gentle, kind, intelligent and a lover of animals. He skated in the street with children. He collected arrowheads, fossils and Indian artifacts in the Bushkill area near the Delaware River. He had a sly sense of humor. He once exhibited a painting at a Stroudsburg art show with a red blob in the center of the canvas. He told passers-by that it represented “all that Stroudsburg knew about art.” He liked to drink beer, but no one ever saw him drunk. By all accounts, he adored his baby daughter. No one ever heard him quarrel with his wife. People said he refused to argue with anybody. A month before the fire, Maps helped a neighbor on Sarah Street care for her critically ill husband so she could go to work. Maps visited the dying man every day until his death.

A 62-year-old grocer of “good reputation” who knew Maps personally made the following statement to police a year after the crime. “It was his opinion that possibly someone who had been hired by his father-in-law had committed the crime.” The grocer told police he believed Maps could be at the bottom of an unknown river or lake with a concrete block tied around his neck. Many of Maps’ friends told the police they believed he had been kidnapped and murdered.

Read more: http://www.poconorecord.com/article/20080413/NEWS/804130349

 

[Gardener1850]

[h=1]People who knew Maps react to homicide[/h]Posted Feb 11, 2008


Editor’s note: This is the third article in a series about a Jan. 21, 1962, unsolved double homicide at 510 Sarah St. The accused, Edward Howard Maps, was never apprehended. The final installment in this series will not be published until District Attorney David Christine has had time to look through the police file on the case.

In the newspaper-clippings file on the Maps homicide at the Pocono Record, there is a personal letter written in 1964 to the Record’s editor, James Ottaway.

The letter writer, an employee at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., had requested copies of articles about the Maps homicide and the fugitive charged with murder and arson.
Ottaway had asked if students at the law center were studying the case. The letter writer replied that they were not. She knew Edward Maps personally a decade before, but they had fallen out of touch. She hoped he was well and was winning recognition for his sculpture. Then she heard the horrible news.

She wrote, “I received a letter from an aunt of mine telling me that ... the F.B.I. was looking for Ed and that he was wanted for murder. Since it was so incomprehensible to me, I went to the F.B.I. here in Washington to check out the story. There I was provided with ample proof that it was indeed the same person I knew in the past. Reading your news stories has increased my state of shock. I am haunted by the question of how this man whom I knew as an extraordinary individual in so many ways, possessed of exceptional intelligence, sensitivity, and creative ability could come to such an end. I suppose nothing I could find out would assuage the dull ache with which this incredible and heart-rending news has left me.”

Read more: http://www.poconorecord.com/article/20080211/NEWS/802110332

 

[Gardener1850]

[h=1]Officer recites vivid description of Maps homicide 46 years later[/h]Jan 28, 2008

Lloyd Bentzoni began working for the Stroudsburg Police Department in January 1962. As a rookie cop, he was assigned to work the night shift. “I don’t remember if we worked midnight to 8 or 11 to 7, but I was already at the police station when the call came in,” he said, referring to the 10:48 p.m. report of a fire at 510 Sarah St.

“Loren Dotey and I responded. In those days the police station was by the courthouse, so the fire was just two blocks away,” he said. “We went on the front porch and the flames were so bad we thought the windows were going to explode. The fire truck pulled in right after we did.”

According to Bentzoni, in his third week as a police officer, there were flames in every window, but the front door was locked.

“The firemen had to break in the back door, which was also locked,” he said. By this time, the East Stroudsburg Police Department had arrived as well.

“We made entry and found Mrs. Maps on the floor. She was bleeding and holding a diaper on her head,” he remembered. “They took her to the emergency room. A fireman came running out of the house with the baby wrapped in a blanket and handed her to me, but our car was blocked in by the trucks.

“East Stroudsburg gave me a ride to the ER. I tried to give the baby CPR in the car. When we got to the hospital, she was already blue and they started on her right away. Mrs. Maps was there in the ER, too, and her face was all burned,” he said. “It’s not something you ever forget.”

He recalled that the baby was naked from the waist down.
“It looked as though Mrs. Maps was changing the baby’s diaper when she was struck in the head,” he said.

Read more: http://www.poconorecord.com/article/20080128/NEWS/801280322

 

[villiscan]

A must-read case. The Pocono Record series is good.

 

[rob525]

Interesting case. I have read/ seen information about it elsewhere ( not sure where). One thing I remember is hearing that fire inspectors stated that the fire took awhile to reach the intensity that it was due to all of the windows being closed. If it took awhile for the fire to reach that intensity and they left the neighbors house at 9:05 pm and the fire being reported at 10:48 it would seem that the incident started almost immediately after they arrived home.
If it was the father in law or some one hired by him, why would Maps be taken from the scene?

 

[Satch]

Interesting case. I have read/ seen information about it elsewhere ( not sure where). One thing I remember is hearing that fire inspectors stated that the fire took awhile to reach the intensity that it was due to all of the windows being closed. If it took awhile for the fire to reach that intensity and they left the neighbors house at 9:05 pm and the fire being reported at 10:48 it would seem that the incident started almost immediately after they arrived home.
If it was the father in law or some one hired by him, why would Maps be taken from the scene?

The month is January, not June. I saw the FBI poster, so this date needs correction. I believe that Maps is guilty. The military did say that he was schizophrenic, at the very least, combat-disorder. He may have had multiple personalities because of this. Therefore, faces of the good Edward Maps and the evil Edward Maps may both be correct. I believe that he is guilty of the murder and arson associated with killing his family. Rob, great point, if Bob, the father-in-law, did this, why take Maps from the scene. Some speculated that Maps came home and found his wife and father-in law in a struggle and Maps left to start a new life, rather than face incrimination. The only thing in the defense's case that raises any doubt might be the animal hairs found at the crime scene as the Maps did not have any pets. Did Bob have a dog?

I think Maps was in one of his bad moods. He may have been in "Good Spirits" earlier that evening. However, people with personality disorders, their behavior can change on a dime. Maps wanted to be free from the family, set the fires, and took off into the woods. The phone call asking Bob to forgive him and saying that "He can't turn himself in, because he had other things to do," screams of guilt for more than some unidentified animal fur. No innocent man would have any reason to make that call. And the unidentified woman who claimed that Maps told her "Your next." in another call. She obviously was fearful of him. Maps seemingly could change from bad to good and back to bad very quickly.

Satch

 

[rob525]

So, I have been wondering about the animal fur / plate with animal blood found at the scene. It is strange. My first thought was that someone ( Edward Maps) may have been killing and /or torturing small animals. I also thought that maybe Mrs. Maps had been preparing a small animal for the stew pot at a later date ( maybe a rabbit)? It would seem that they could at least determine the type of animal ( but admittedly it may not even be relevant). As for the phone call. I may be mistaken but I thought that Maps is alleged to have called and said to tell Bob that he forgave him. As if Maps was saying Bob had commited the crime. I will go back and look. But I agree that Maps did it.

 

[Satch]

So, I have been wondering about the animal fur / plate with animal blood found at the scene. It is strange. My first thought was that someone ( Edward Maps) may have been killing and /or torturing small animals. I also thought that maybe Mrs. Maps had been preparing a small animal for the stew pot at a later date ( maybe a rabbit)? It would seem that they could at least determine the type of animal ( but admittedly it may not even be relevant). As for the phone call. I may be mistaken but I thought that Maps is alleged to have called and said to tell Bob that he forgave him. As if Maps was saying Bob had commited the crime. I will go back and look. But I agree that Maps did it.

I should go back and study that phone call and 'Who forgave who?" But I agree Rob, 100% Maps did this.

Satch

 

[CastlesBurning]

Bump

 

[CastlesBurning]

It's now been 60 years...

 

[John/Jane Doe]

3928DMPA - Edward Hower Maps

 

[rob525]

I am curious about the declaration of death in 1971 with no explanation. I wonder if a FOIA request would reveal anything relevant to that. If they removed him from the wanted list and declared him dead at 50ish years old it would seem that there was something driving this.

 

[rob525]

I wonder if the animal hair / blood presence was ever confirmed. I can't even seem to find where that was reported.
I do not put too much stock in the Schizophrenia thing. I think that in those days that may have been a blanket term. I wonder if there was anything really wrong with Maps other than a desire to get out of the Army. Perhaps they labelled him a schizophrenic to get rid of him?

 

[rob525]

The posting say that DNA is available. I wonder if the DNA has been entered into the genealogy sites for familial matches?

 

[nostonepa]

I am curious about the declaration of death in 1971 with no explanation. I wonder if a FOIA request would reveal anything relevant to that. If they removed him from the wanted list and declared him dead at 50ish years old it would seem that there was something driving this.

The usual reason to declare someone legally dead is to get some money or property that the deceased owned. Maybe he had other children or siblings or nieces or nephews.

 

[nostonepa]

The usual reason to declare someone legally dead is to get some money or property that the deceased owned. Maybe he had other children or siblings or nieces or nephews.

I just checked newspapers.com. it was his brother and sister who had him declared legally dead. He had 20k.

 

[rob525]

I just checked newspapers.com. it was his brother and sister who had him declared legally dead. He had 20k.

It is still weird to me that the FBI would take him off the wanted list etc. I get declaring him dead for insurance purposes. However, he most certainly could have been alive in 1971 at the age of just 49-50. "The FBI reportedly destroyed Maps fugitive file in December 1977" this tells me that they believe that they know for a fact Maps is dead.

 

[nostonepa]

It is still weird to me that the FBI would take him off the wanted list etc. I get declaring him dead for insurance purposes. However, he most certainly could have been alive in 1971 at the age of just 49-50. "The FBI reportedly destroyed Maps fugitive file in December 1977" this tells me that they believe that they know for a fact Maps is dead.

You're right. I can't understand why the file would be destroyed unless they were 100 percent sure he was dead. Then again there's good old bureaucratic ineptitude.