The Amish Killer

Ed Gingerich belonged to an Old Order Amish community in Rockdale Township, Crawford County, Pennsylvania, where he farmed with his wife, Katie, and their young children. In the early 1990s his mental health declined badly. By 1992 he was hallucinating and had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, but he disliked his medication, and community elders allowed him to stop taking it.

On March 18, 1993, Ed attacked Katie in the kitchen of their farmhouse and killed her, with their children in the house. Katie was 29. The violence of the attack was extreme, and it shocked a community that almost never saw its members in criminal court. Ed was taken into custody the same day and charged with criminal homicide.

At his 1994 trial, the court heard extensive evidence about his illness. He was found guilty but mentally ill of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to two and a half to five years, with credit for time served, and he was treated in a prison psychiatric unit. He was released in March 1998. He later spent time at an Amish-run mental health center in Michigan before returning to Crawford County. On January 14, 2011, he was found dead in a barn in Rockdale Township, and authorities ruled his death a suicide.