Pennsylvania: The Revolt of Leo Held

There was almost nothing in Leo Held’s life that could have presaged the end of it. Held, 40, a burly (6 ft., 200 lbs.), balding lab technician at a Lock Haven, Pa., paper mill, had been a school-board member, Boy Scout leader, secretary of a fire brigade, churchgoer and affectionate father. Certainly he bickered occasionally with his neighbors, drove too aggressively over the hilly highways between his Loganton home and the mill, and sometimes fretted about the job that he held for 19 years. But to most of his neighbors and coworkers, he was a paragon of the responsible, respectable citizen.

That image was shattered in a well-planned hour of bloodshed last week when Held decided to mount a one-man revolt against the world he feared and resented. After seeing his wife off to work and their children to school, Held, a proficient marksman, pocketed two pistols—a .45 automatic and a Smith & Wesson .38—and drove his station wagon to the mill. Parking carefully, he gripped a gun in each fist and stalked into the plant. Then he started shooting with a calculated frenzy that filled his fellow-worker victims with two and three bullets apiece, at least 30 shots in all. One bullet shattered a transformer, adding darkness to the sudden panic; yet throughout his ten-minute rampage, Held displayed the calm proficiency of a man who has mapped his assault in advance. Shot dead were Supervisors Carmen H. Edwards and Richard Davenport, Lab Technicians Allen R. Barrett and Elmer E. Weaver, and Superintendent Donald V. Walden. Picking his targets with care as he strode through the mill, Held also wounded James Allen, a superintendent; Richard Carter, a lab technician; David Overdorf, a machine operator, and a manager, Woodrow Stultz.

No More Bull. Stopping for a few casual words with incoming workers as he left the mill, Held next drove to the Lock Haven airport, where he shot at Switchboard Operator Gerry Ramm four times, wounding her twice. Thinking it was a prank, the airport manager hustled Held outside without a protest. Then Held’s obsession sent him to the Sugar Valley School, where three of his own children and some 500 others had been locked inside after police had notified the principal of Held’s rampage. After circling the school, Held drove home and invaded the house of Mr. and Mrs. Floyd Quiggle across the street. The Quiggles were still asleep in bed. Held’s shots killed Quiggle instantly and critically wounded Mrs. Quiggle while their four-year-old daughter cowered under her own bed in fright. Helping himself to more ammunition and a rifle, Held went home.

A hastily formed posse found him in his doorway, armed and snarling defiance: “Come and get me. I’m not taking any more of their bull.” Although Held’s brother-in-law pleaded with him to surrender and bullets shattered his shoulder, leg and right wrist, Held switched the .38 to his left hand, firing until it, too, was smashed. Taken to a guarded hospital bed, he never regained full consciousness, dying later from the complications of his many wounds. He left behind a trail of six people wounded, six others dead.

One to Go. As news of Held’s bloody rampage reverberated across central Pennsylvania, puzzled officials discovered a tenuous chain of logic behind his actions. Mrs. Ramm had quit a car pool, complaining of Held’s driving. Many victims at the paper plant either were in authority over him or had been promoted while he had not. Held and Quiggle had feuded over smoke from burning leaves, and probers soon found that Held’s stolid surface had masked truculence, resentment and rage. His doctor, noting that Held had shown paranoid tendencies a year ago, said: “He felt the people at the plant were talking about him.” Another neighbor, Mrs. Ella Knisely, told of a spat over a fallen tree limb that so enraged Held he beat the 71-year-old widow with the branch. She took him to court on assault and battery charges, but the magistrate threw out her case and Held’s cross complaint. If the jurist “had thought a little more carefully,” said Mrs. Knisely, and seen that “here was a man who was sick and sent him to a psychiatrist, this thing could have been prevented.”

Mrs. Knisely added that she wished Held had slain her instead of young Quiggle. Indeed, he may well have intended to include her with the rest. As he lay dying, doctors said, Held thanked a nurse for a glass of water, asked about his oldest son, and murmured, “I had one more to go.”