The final chapter appears to have been written in a horrific 1976 mass murder.
A funeral and interment were held Sept. 19 for Michael Abt, whose family members were killed 50 years ago in their Trevose home.
The funeral for Abt, who died on Aug. 23 at age 72 and lived in Penndel, was held at Visconto Funeral Home in Rhawnhurst. Afterward, Abt’s ashes were buried with his family’s bodies at St. Dominic Cemetery in Holmesburg.
Abt attended Our Lady of Calvary in first grade before the family moved to Trevose, specifically 3711 Fleetwood Ave.
On March 12, 1976, a Friday, members of the family headed to school and work. Five of them returned home, only to be shot to death. Killed were Jack and Peggy Abt and three of their children – Margie, Johnny and Kathy. Also killed was Gary Engle, Margie’s boyfriend. Heidi, the family St. Bernard, was also shot to death.
Michael Abt, 21 at the time, was running late and, by the time he got home, the killer was gone. His 23-year-old brother, Clifford, was in jail.
Michael arrived home to find blood. Bensalem Township Patrolman Dave Clee, who lived on the block (and still does) and was on his way home for a dinner break, discovered the bodies.
A funeral Mass was held five days later at St. Dominic – where Jack and Peggy were married in 1951 – while the hunt for the killer continued.
The case was ultimately solved in 10 days thanks to two kids finding the murder weapon while fishing, the false report of a stolen gun and some crafty interrogation techniques.
As it turned out, the killer, 24-year-old George Geschwendt, lived right across the street and was especially targeting Clifford and Michael, his former friends, due to a personal vendetta. He was in the Abt house all day. The killer left the house after the telephone rang a number of times, worried that the caller would alert police that nobody was answering at a house where most residents were home in the early evening.
Geschwendt made the mistake of not throwing the gun deep enough in Neshaminy Creek after the murders. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to the electric chair. The death penalty was later ruled unconstitutional, and Geschwendt received a life sentence. He died in 2020 at a Wayne County prison.
Clifford Abt died in 1989, leaving Michael as the only surviving family member.
Former Bucks County Courier Times reporter Kathryn Canavan, who was there on the night of the murder through the trial, wrote a book on the murders called A Killer in the House, published earlier this year to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the crime.
The author thanked a lot of people in the book, including the Rev. Brian Connolly, former pastor of St. Dominic, and Cheryl Viscomi and Colette McCaffrey, of the cemetery office, for helping her find the Abt graves.
In March, Canavan held a book signing at the Barnes & Noble in Fairless Hills. Michael Abt was in attendance, and he signed some books, too. So did Clee, the Bensalem patrolman who found the bodies in the basement.
Canavan and Viscomi were among those who attended the funeral and burial.
Oddly, as Canavan wrote in her book, there was another celebrated murder in Bucks County on the same day as the Abt killings. A 77-year-old couple, Ed and Marguerite Vogenberger, were tortured with a stun gun, then shot to death in their Langhorne home. The case remains unsolved.
Per Michael’s request, donations in his memory can be made to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital 501 St. Jude Place, Memphis, TN 38105 or https://www.stjude.org ••
To buy the book, go to https://www.brooklinebooks.com/9781955041669/killer-in-the-house/ or amazon.com.
To report any information on the unsolved killings of Ed and Marguerite Vogenberger, call Bucks County Detectives at 215-348-6354.
