What happened to Officer Tom Mathews in those darkened woods?

His death stunned his law enforcement colleagues and reverberated through the normally quiet Abington community. The answers to the mystery would ultimately be revealed during an intense, three-week manhunt.

In the days immediately following the murder, hundreds of police officers swarmed the area, seeking the officer's killer as well as clues to the circumstances of his death. Abington officers worked round the clock, joined by police colleagues from Philadelphia and Montgomery County, as well as a squad of officers from the Reading Railroad Police. The Reading Company's tracks were in close proximity to the crime scene, so the assistance of the rail police was essential.

Numerous citizen volunteers also offered their help, including three local pilots, who circled the area in private airplanes, hoping to spot the killer.

While the manhunt would turn up several leads, all that was known initially was that the fallen officer had sustained three bullet wounds.

"It seems quite possible," Lieutenant Alwyn Streeper told a reporter, "that Mathews may have caught the man...and that the officer was in the act of fastening on the handcuffs when he was killed without warning."

 

The hands of a killer: fingerprints taken by the Virginia State Police helped identify the fugitive wanted for Off. Mathews' murder.

 

 

 

A resident of Panther Road told investigators he had heard the warning shots but assumed they were caused by Boy Scouts setting off firecrackers at a nearby, sometimes-used encampment. A short time later the neighbor heard "a commanding voice" say, "Lie down. Lie down," followed by three rapid shots. Still thinking it was pre-July 4th fireworks, the resident went to bed, unaware of the desperate search underway for Off. Mathews.

Continued