Thursday, December 4, 1975
END OF TRAGEDY
A skeleton hanging high in a tree was found Thanksgiving afternoon and apparently ended the mystery of the Walter Smith – Peter Hauer tragedy.
The identification of the bones as being those of Peter Marshall Hauer was positively confirmed Monday by the State’s Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Ivan Sopher, in a call to Corporal W. R. Dyer, State Policeman, of Marlinton, who was in charge of the investigation.
Comparison was made to dental and skull X-rays supplied by Hauer’s family doctor. Hauer’s death was ruled a suicide by hanging and the time of death was judged to be in accordance with the time of Hauer’s disappearance about June 9.
The heavy foliage at that time of year had prevented the sighting of the body in the intensive search in June, and, of course, the search had centered on caves.
Sammy Dean, of Hillsboro, and his 11 year old son, Larkin, were hunting in the Lobelia area Thursday, when the boy saw the skull in the tree. The head and part of the neck skeleton was with a four-foot section of rope about 30 feet above the ground. The remainder of the skeletonized body had fallen to the ground. The location was about two and a half miles from Hauer’s home on the old Hull place owned by Elmer Wymer, as near as we can ascertain.
Hauer was born November 11, 1945, in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. His mother, Carmelia Hauer, and a sister, Lisa, survive him. He was a former teacher, and his interest in caves brought him to the Lobelia area, where he purchased the Harper Anderson farm. He was working on a history of saltpeter caves in Pocahontas, Greenbrier and Monroe counties.
Corporal Dyer says he is satisfied this is the end of the mystery that began with the June 4 disappearance in the Lobelia area of Walter G. Smith, 18, of Follansbee, a summer worker at Watoga State Park. Hauer was last seen the following Monday. Smith’s body, with three bullet holes in the head, was found on Wednesday June 11, in the Lobelia Saltpeter Cave, right close to Hauer’s home, after a last will and testament paper of Hauer’s was found in his house telling of the murder and where Smith’s body was and that his own body would eventually be found in a cave, hence the exhaustive search of caves in the area that followed…
Hauer had been indicted for Smith’s murder at the October Term of Court and so the case is judged a murder-suicide, and the case is closed.
