The Blue-Eyed Six: America’s First Insurance Murder Case

The Blue-Eyed Six were six men from Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, who conspired in 1878 to murder a poor 60-year-old laborer named Joseph Raber and collect on life insurance policies they had taken out on his life. Five were hanged for the crime. The sixth was acquitted at a retrial. The case is widely cited as the first prosecution of an insurance murder in the United States and drew reporters from around the world to the Lebanon County Courthouse in 1879.¹

The Six Men

The conspirators fell into two groups: the policy beneficiaries who stood to collect on Raber’s death, and the hired hands who did the killing.²

Israel Brandt, the ringleader, who ran Brandt’s Tavern where the men met to plan the killing.
Henry F. Wise, a beneficiary.
Josiah Hummel, a beneficiary.
George Zechman, a beneficiary who later argued he had only been an investor in the policies.
Charles Drews, hired for $1,200 to carry out the killing.
Franklin (Frank) Stichler, recruited by Drews to help.

The nickname stuck because all six were said to share blue eyes, a detail that later fed the local ghost stories about the case.

The Victim and the Insurance Setup

Joseph Raber lived in a small mountain hut in Union Township and worked as a laborer. He had no apparent means to pay life insurance premiums, but his neighbors quietly arranged substantial policies on him through a Lebanon insurance agent named George W. Schweinhard, whose offices sat near the 8th Street train station. Schweinhard wrote the policies on behalf of Brandt.¹

At one point the total coverage on Raber’s life reached $30,000, spread across insurers in Allentown, Reading, Lebanon, Connecticut, and Philadelphia. Roughly $20,000 in policies were dropped before he died, leaving about $10,000 in force at the time of the killing.¹

The Killing at Indiantown Creek

Before settling on a method, the group discussed poisoning Raber with chloroform and staging a boating accident. They chose drowning.²

On December 7, 1878, witnesses saw Raber walking with Drews and Stichler toward a footbridge over Indiantown Creek in Union Township. The two men forced him into the shallow water and drowned him. The next morning, Brandt reported the death to the coroner, claiming Raber had suffered from “vertigo” and fallen from the bridge. Accomplices backed the story. The coroner’s jury found no visible bruises on the body and initially accepted the death as an accident.²

How the Plot Came Apart

Suspicion built quickly because a man as poor as Raber had no business being so heavily insured. Insurance companies opened their own investigations and began pressing local witnesses. The case broke open when Joseph F. Peters, a West Hanover Township man who had first told investigators he saw Raber stumbling alone near the creek, changed his story under pressure. On February 4, 1879, Peters formally charged all six men with conspiracy to murder Joseph Raber. All six were arrested that day.³

The Trial

The trial opened April 18, 1879, at the Lebanon County Courthouse. It drew reporters from around the world and was documented by a court stenographer, unusual for the era. None of the six defendants testified.²

Peters was the state’s star witness. He testified that he had watched Drews and Stichler force Raber into the water and drown him, and that Drews had intimidated locals into staying quiet. Other witnesses described the planning meetings at Brandt’s Tavern. On April 24, 1879, after about five hours of deliberation, the jury found all six men guilty. Former Lebanon County Judge G. Thomas Gates later wrote that the verdict was “unusual” because only two of the six had physically drowned Raber, and that the facts “didn’t add up but came close enough for the outcome the court wanted.”⁴

The Hangings

Charles Drews and Frank Stichler were hanged first, on November 14, 1879, at the Lebanon County Jail at 8th and Walton Streets.⁵

Israel Brandt, Josiah Hummel, and Henry F. Wise were hanged on May 13, 1880. Brandt and Hummel had attempted to escape from jail beforehand, having obtained ether to aid the effort. Both men left sealed written confessions with instructions that they not be opened until a year after their deaths. On the gallows, Wise was allowed to speak. He told the crowd that all six conspirators were guilty of Raber’s murder, a pointed remark given that by that date George Zechman had been acquitted.⁵

Zechman was granted a retrial and argued that he had been only an investor in the policies, not an active participant in the plot to kill Raber. The court accepted that defense and found him not guilty. He died of consumption at age 39, several years after his acquittal.⁶

Why the Case Still Matters in Insurance Law

According to reporting by the Allentown Morning Call, the Blue-Eyed Six case led to a major overhaul of insurance practices and prompted the government to prohibit insuring strangers, meaning taking out life insurance on people who had no knowledge of or financial connection to the coverage.⁷ The principle that a policyholder must have an insurable interest in the life of the insured became a standard requirement in American life insurance, and the Raber killing is frequently pointed to as one of the events that pushed the industry and lawmakers in that direction.

Legacy in Lebanon County

Nearly a century and a half later, the case remains a fixture of local memory. Joseph Raber is buried at the cemetery of Moonshine United Zion Church in Union Township. Local legend says that if you circle the church counter-clockwise at midnight and look through the windows, six sets of blue eyes will stare back. The church has said its security cameras have captured nothing more than people attempting the ritual. Despite what visitors sometimes assume, none of the six conspirators are buried there; each was buried separately by his family elsewhere in the county.⁸

Reports of “blue floating lights” near the church and Indiantown Creek have circulated for generations, described in some accounts as “the eyes of the dead” and in others as tied to an older Native American legend. The site of the old Lebanon County Jail where the hangings were carried out, now a farmers market, has also drawn paranormal investigators over the years.⁹ A historical marker at Wood Road and McLean Road on the Fort Indiantown Gap Military Reservation identifies the backyard grave site of Franklin Stichler.¹⁰ Joseph Peters, whose testimony sent five men to the gallows, did not outlive them by long. He died of consumption, reportedly telling those around him that he was haunted by the ghosts of the executed.³

The story has been told and retold in print, on stage, and on screen. C.M. Bowman published the first book on the case in 1879, followed by a collection of newspaper accounts in 1880. Edna Jenkins Carmean’s The Blue Eyed Six was published by the Sowers Printing Company in 1974.¹¹ Gary Ludwig’s The Blue Eyed Six: A Historical Narrative followed in 1979, and Judge Gates covered the executions in A History of Hangings in Lebanon County.⁴ Brothers Bruce W. and Brian W. Kreider adapted the case as a 1993 stage play, The Blue Eyed Six: Hurled Into Eternity, which sold out at the State Theatre in Lebanon, the Mt. Gretna Playhouse, and the Hershey Theatre. Brian Kreider went on to direct a 2007 documentary, The Blue Eyed Six. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is also said to have drawn on the case, setting a Sherlock Holmes story in the Lebanon, Pennsylvania, area.⁷

1
LebTown. The True Crime Story That Made Lebanon Famous Around the World
2
LebTown. The True Crime Story That Made Lebanon Famous Around the World
3
LebTown. The True Crime Story That Made Lebanon Famous Around the World
4
Pennsylvania Historic Dramas. The Blue Eyed Six Program
5
LebTown. The True Crime Story That Made Lebanon Famous Around the World
6
LebTown. The True Crime Story That Made Lebanon Famous Around the World
7
The Morning Call. Infamous PA 1878 Murder Case Lives
8
Moonshine United Zion Church. Rumors and Ghosts
9
LebTown. The True Crime Story That Made Lebanon Famous Around the World
10
The Historical Marker Database. Blue Eyed Six Grave Site
11
Lebanon County Historical Society. The Blue Eyed Six