Two Men Held in Killing of Three Women in Bank in Pennsylvania

Two men wearing white painter’s caps stormed into a rural bank with guns blazing Friday, killing three female employees and wounding the manager and a customer before fleeing in a car, authorities said.

Two men, stopped about two miles north of the scene in a car fitting witnesses’ descriptions, were arrested and charged with murder, state police Lt. Robert Werts said.

Stanley Joseph Hertzog, 29, of Allentown, and Martin Daniel Appel, 28, of Northampton, were charged with murder, attempted murder, aggravated assault, bank robbery and conspiracy.

Police had set up roadblocks and used a helicopter to scan the area near Bethlehem in eastern Pennsylvania about 60 miles north of Philadelphia. They stopped the car near Kriedersville, state police Capt. Benjamin Brooks said.

Tellers Janice Confer, 48, of Northampton, and Hazel Evans, 55, of Coplay, were found dead on the floor at their stations behind the counter at the First National Bank of Bath branch office in East Allen Township, Werts said.

Another employee, secretary Jane Hartman, 34, of Catasauqua, was found shot to death at a desk.

Customer Thomas Marchetto, 37, of Bath, and branch manager Marcia Jean Hauser, 31, of Nazareth, also were shot. Both were listed in critical condition at area hospitals.

“It appears to me that the two working in the teller windows were lying on the floor to escape this and still were executed,” said Northampton County Coroner Joseph F. Reichel. He called the slayings “brutal, unnecessary killings.”

Werts said police did not know how much money was taken, and he refused to say if any was recovered. Authorities recovered a handgun used in the crime, he said.

The one-story, glass-and-brick building sits about 150 feet off a two-lane highway. It is across the street from a commercial storage firm and about a half-mile from a large cement and stone quarry.