The Shaw Mine
Mid-way between Pittsburgh and Steubenville on the former Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis Railroad (also called the Panhandle) stands the once bustling mining town appropriately named Midway, Pennsylvania. Nestled in the hills just one mile to the north of this small town near the intersection of Quicksilver Road and PA-980 rests the remains of the desolate and nearly forgotten company town of the Shaw Mine. Shaw Mine was a large, deep coal mine that broke ground in 1901 by famed Pittsburgh industrialist, Henry Clay Frick’s, Shaw Coal Company. The mine was one of the largest in the region when the Pittsburgh Coal Company began its 40 year lease in 1902.[13] This lease ended in 1910 when the Pittsburgh Coal Company fully purchased the Shaw Mine land.[16] At its start, the mine had two electric locomotives operating at two different mine entrances, and its nearly 400 employees were expected to extract 1,500 tons of coal to fill nearly 1,000 coal cars each day. Shaw Mine was adjacent to the coal mines in McDonald, which was described at the time as, “the center for the greatest bituminous mining in the country, if not the world.”[15]
Through the lens of newspaper accounts of the time, Shaw Mine would appear to be a cesspit of ill repute and seemingly endless crime. Anything from simple robbery to mass murder took place here. Drifters filtered through the area in search of work – many of them recent immigrants who spoke little to no English. Times were tough and jobs few and far between, but the coal mine was always hiring and background checks weren’t yet a concept. It was dangerous and dirty work. In 1902, Washington County reported 54 deaths in its coal mines, 32 of which were immigrants. Shaw Mine accounted for one of those deaths that year, and two deaths the year after.[14] It is clear to see how the hard, dangerous underground work environment took a toll on the mental health of the miners, and could fuel their oftentimes deviant behavior.
The largest headline out of the crime reports of Shaw Mine tells of a revenge-fueled murder spree carried out by a disgruntled mine worker named John Marks on the cold, frosty morning of February 9, 1910.
The Man Behind the Murders
John Marks already had quite a traumatic past by the time he reached his early 30's. By the age of 16 he had his hips crushed between a wall and coal car while working in a mine.[8] Seven years later in 1900, at a mine near Houston, Pennsylvania, he was kicked in the head by a mule.[7] Healthcare not meeting our modern standards, and with money needed to keep food on the table, he returned to his work in the mines shortly after these life-altering incidents.
By 1909, Marks was operating a general store at Shaw Mine. That December, Tony Yatti, a co-worker, turned him into the police for running an illegal speakeasy out of the store. Marks was brought before Justice J. H. Cook of McDonald, with Yatti, Dan Pemello, and Mike Mena (Marks’ brother-in-law) testifying against him.[3] The three men who testified against him, all Italian immigrants, must have hoped to put Marks behind bars and get him out of their lives. Instead, the judge dropped the charges, marking them all as enemies of what would soon become a deranged killer. The spelling and ethnicities of the men are not consistent in all reports.
The three men could not accept the fact that Marks was still a free man. They continued to agitate him, threatening his life. Marks and Pemello got into a gun fight over a card game at the general store in January of 1910, where a stray bullet struck and injured a young boy. The incident brought them both before Justice Eaton of Midway, where they were charged but apparently let go. All three then allegedly visited Marks at his home and threatened to blow his house up in an attempt to extort $100 (over $3,300 in 2024) out of him. Tired of the threats and harassment, Marks moved his wife and child to safety at his father’s house nearby, and set about hatching a plan for revenge.[3] [12] [17]
The Day of the Murders
Through all these incidents, Marks continued running the general store at Shaw Mine. Around 10:30 AM on Wednesday, February 9, 1910, while having a conversation with his 20-year-old co-worker, Tony Putchey, in the store, Dan Pemello arrived out front. No one knows if any dialogue was exchanged between the two enemies before Marks grabbed a shotgun from within the store, stepped outside, pointed it at Pemello’s head and fired, killing him instantly. Reports at the time claimed that the blast had nearly torn his head from his body.
With the first victim taken care of, Marks set the rest of his plan into action. Grabbing a revolver from inside the store, he set off toward a boarding house ¾-mile away, with Putchey following close behind. Once they arrived Putchey stood watch outside and Marks stepped through the front door. He spied Tony Yatti, the man who turned him in for running a speakeasy, washing his hands at the sink. He drew the pistol without hesitation and shot him five times – two of the shots striking through the heart. He had one round left in the cylinder and one man left on his list – his brother-in-law Mike Mena. Mena sat at a table in the boarding house either reading or writing a letter, and before he could stand to run, he was shot in the torso and killed.[3] [12]
Now that all three men were dead or dying, Marks quickly left the house and took off for the hills with Tony Putchey still at his side. Although Putchey was never accused of committing any of the killings himself, he immediately made himself an accessory to the killings as he fled with John Marks.[12] [17]
The Investigation
The first official on the scene was a McDonald investigator named Constable M. Richard Conley, who arrived from Washington that afternoon. Shortly after, three state troopers arrived from Burgettstown: Phillip Roller, George Davis, and L. E. Ivory. They assembled a posse and searched for Marks throughout the day and night with no luck.[3] [17] Tips began to arrive to suggest that the criminals had fled somewhere around Imperial, Oakdale, or Bridgeville, but searches of these areas turned up nothing.[17] [19] By that evening, the story had already hit the local papers. Within a day, the story was running up and down the east coast from Tampa to Boston, with coverage eventually reaching Nevada. Along with the gory details of the murder, the criminals' descriptions were often printed to help aid in their capture.
“Marks is about 32 years of age, short, stout and swarthy and wears a closely cropped black mustache. He is a rather good looking fellow of pleasing manners and speaks English well. Puchey is 20 years of age, short and slender, and does not speak English well.”
The day after the murders, Coroner James Heffran, with the assistance of Deputy Coroner H.F. Humphries of McDonald performed the autopsies of the deceased.[12] [17] The shotgun used to kill Tony Yatti was handed over to Humphries, but the revolver was not found.[12] That led authorities to believe that Marks was still armed and dangerous. A coroner's inquest was then held with a jury. This aimed to determine the cause and manner of death of the victims, and to confirm the killer’s identity. George Bucheit, Edward Means, David Campbell, Adam Cochran, John Whitaker, and George Stein all served as jurors.[17]
By Friday, February 12, the victims were buried in what are now unmarked graves at the Hilldale Cemetery (later known as Robb Cemetery) in McDonald.[17] Tony Yatti was 45 years old with a wife and child, Dan Pemello was unmarried at 22 years old, and Mike Mena was 47 years old with a wife.[3]
A grand jury indicted Marks and Putchey for the crimes on February 15, which made it possible for them to be apprehended anywhere within the United States.[6]
What Happened to John Marks?
By February 11, only two days after the murders, local officers were the first to abandon the search for Marks and Putchey after all of their clues led to dead ends. The state police continued their search and investigated reports of Marks’ intention to return to Shaw Mine to kill more of his enemies, including Tony Yatti’s son Tony Jr. and Mike Mena’s brother, Ralph. David Claperton, superintendent of Shaw Mine, was also thought to be a potential target because he refused to employ Marks in the mine unless he lived in one of the company houses – an argument Marks must have eventually lost.[2] [17]
The manhunt for Marks and his accomplice continued with no developments until March, when District Attorney C. L. V. Acheson received a tip about John Marks’ capture in the eastern mining settlement of Wyoming, Pennsylvania.
“...the prisoner there was a Greek answering Mark’s description in every detail. It was also stated the man admitted having but recently left Washington county saying he had been employed in a mine near Midway.”
Regardless of how promising this tip was, Constable Conley and an unnamed acquaintance of John Marks traveled to the village of Wyoming and met with the recently arrested prisoner, only to discover that it was not actually Marks, and that their long trip had been a waste.[10]
By June, there were reports that Marks had finally returned to Shaw Mine to finish the job, but it appears to have only been speculation. Later that month, there were multiple reports to the police from those living in and around Shaw Mine, which caused Constable Conley and Officer Bucheit to investigate further.[18] Paranoia was rampant at Shaw Mine, with rumors spreading like wildfire throughout the company town claiming that Marks was hiding out in the woods nearby and plotting his attacks, all the while being supplied by family and friends.[4] The investigators were skeptical of these reports, and refused to make a statement when another report claimed that Marks was hiding in a cave near McDonald, armed with three revolvers and a vicious bulldog.[2] [5] That claim was likely sensational, as later reports claimed he was still on the run and wasn’t mentioned again. Regardless, several newspapers across the country picked up the story, adding further confusion to the case.
By July the case was cold. It wasn’t until February of 1911, an entire year after the murders, when another lead arose. A man by the name of John Marco was arrested for shooting and killing a man named John Berri on West Chestnut Street in Washington, Pennsylvania. Constable Conley visited this new suspect with an oddly-similar name and description, only to discover it was not in fact the murderer of Shaw Mine.[11]
So where did John Marks go? He seemed to be everywhere at once, but nowhere at all. Despite all the reports of his presence in Midway, Shaw Mine, and McDonald, he was never found and the families of the men he murdered never got the justice they sought. Was Constable Conley simply bad at identifying suspects, or did John Marks successfully get away with committing one of the bloodiest crimes in the Fort Cherry area? We may never know, but an important detail about Constable Conley should be mentioned; he was an alcoholic till death. When not drunk, he was described as a "most efficient officer," and "rated as one of the best officers in the county," but again, only when sober. Attempts were made to remove Conley from his position, forcing him to take an oath not to consume liquor for the next five years in August,1913.[1] He did not uphold his end of the bargain, however. In January of 1918, was found dead in the middle of O'Hara Street, having drank himself to the point of passing out into the snow and suffocating to death.[9]
Now, over 120 years after the murders, most above-ground evidence of the Shaw Mine's existence has been erased, save for a few surviving company houses, one of which was recently demolished. The strip mining operations, Quicksilver Golf Course, and the new Interstate 576 would render the area almost unrecognizable to the hundreds of coal miners that lived in the area in the early 20th century, but the mystery of John Marks' fate remains today. So the next time you find yourself driving along Quicksilver Road or Route 980, or riding the Montour Trail through the old Shaw Mine settlement, keep your eyes peeled and your wits sharp, for the ghosts of the murder victims may still be haunting the eerie woods where John Marks made his getaway.
“Constable Conley Gives up Liquor,” Washington Observer, August 20, 1913
“Declare That Marks is Seeking Lives of Two Men,” Washington Observer, June 16, 1910
“Feud Culminates In A Triple Murder at Mining Settlement,” Washington Observer, February 10, 1910
“Foreigners Panic Stricken by Rumors,” Washington Observer, June 15, 1910
“Fugitive At Bay,” Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, June 15, 1910
“How Foreigners Figure in Court,” Washington Reporter, February 15, 1910
“John Marks…kicked in the forehead,” Washington Observer, October 4, 1900
“John Marks…severely injured,” Washington Observer, August 7, 1893
“M. Richard Conley is Found Dead in Snow,” Washington Observer, January 21, 1918
“Man Captured at Wyoming Not Marks,” Washington Observer, March 26, 1910
“Marco Interviewed by Seeker of Assassin,” Washington Observer, February 21, 1911
“May Be on the Slayer’s Trail,” Washington Reporter, February 10, 1910
“Millions in Big Coal Deal,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, January 4, 1902
“Mine Fatalities At Head of the List,” Washington Observer, January 1, 1903
“New Shaw Mine,” Washington Observer, January 14, 1903
“Pittsburgh Coal Buys H.C. Frick Holdings,” Washington Reporter, May 25, 1910
“Still No Trace of John Marks,” Washington Reporter, February 11, 1910
“Think Murderer is Hiding Near Midway,” Washington Reporter, June 16, 1910
“Troops Trail Fugitives,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, February 11, 1910