Karns, George: 1976

George D. Karns was an 18-year-old gas station attendant in Duncansville. Elizabeth Louise Shank of Tipton worked at Jack’s Quik Mart near Bellwood. Both were killed in armed holdups; Karns on March 11, 1976. Initially, police searched for two men and one woman in a four-door sedan. Ballistics tests showed the same weapon. The trio in the sedan was also suspected in a robbery in Hagerstown, Maryland and Washington, D.C. The Washington robbery was of a Roy Rogers Restaurant; during that holdup, four people were led into a cooler and shot. Three of the four died.

Jeffrey Daugherty, 20, of Taylor, Michigan, and Bonnie Jean Heath, 41, of Beaverton, Michigan, were arrested on March 12, 1976, in Appomattox, Virginia. Their arrest was about a day and a half after Mr. Karns’ murder; the pair were arrested after another robbery in Virginia that netted them between $100 and $200. The two were held in Virginia on detainers until Pennsylvania was able to ask for extradition.