1980: Named as the Father, Too Sick to Answer: Howard Drass Dies Weeks After a Grim Discovery
Stella Williamson was a reclusive spinster in a small Pennsylvania town, remembered mainly for her silence and her needlework. When she died in August 1980, her companion found a letter she had sealed two decades earlier, directing him to an old trunk in the attic. Inside were the remains of five infants, wrapped in newspapers spanning nearly a decade, some with ligatures still around their necks. In the letter, Stella named a local man, Howard Drass, as the father of every child.
Investigators traced Drass within weeks, hoping he could finally explain what had happened inside the Williamson house. By then he had suffered a stroke that left him paralysed, deaf and mute, unable to answer a single question put to him. He died on 5 November 1980, barely two months after the trunk was opened, taking whatever he knew to his grave, and the case was closed with no explanation ever given for how five babies died in that house unnoticed.
