Editor's note: This story was first published on April 5, 2026
Kathryn Canavan was a 25-year-old newspaper reporter that Friday night in March 1976 when a friendly convenience store clerk tipped her about a possible double murder in Trevose.
A double murder would be huge news. The address was a few miles away on Fleetwood Avenue, so she paid for the six bottles of Pepsi she wanted, then headed over.
Canavan would end up spending eight months covering what remains the worst mass murder in Bucks County history. A killing spree so infamous it was mentioned in an episode of the TV drama, “Criminal Minds.”
Decades later, Canavan was at a Fairless Hills book signing for one of her historical crime novels when she ran into old Bucks County Courier Times
coworkers. They suggested she write about the Fleetwood Avenue murders.
Later that day, Canavan returned to the scene of the crime. She parked on Dara Faith Drive and looked up at the house where the Abt family had lived.
“I just knew I was going to write it,” she said. “I started researching the night.”
Abt family murders leaves community terrorized, law enforcement frustrated
On March 12, 1976, Canavan witnessed a crime scene like none she had been at before.
Police were everywhere. There were so many lights it looked like daytime, said Canavan, now 76, whose recently released book, “Killer in the House,” takes a deep-dive into the notorious crime.
She found out later that she was the first reporter there, less than two hours after Michael Abt came home after helping set up tables for a friend’s wedding to find his family home was the scene of a horror movie.
But the first night, the only thing Canavan knew for sure was whatever happened, it was really bad. Multiple murders were extremely rare in 1976, and multiple murders inside a home were unheard of, she said.
But none of the cops were talking. She jotted a few notes, finished the last bottle of Pepsi and drove home. She planned to get an early start Saturday for the Sunday edition.
The next morning Canavan, and everyone else in the Philadelphia area, were learning about an unspeakable crime in the quiet neighborhood straddling Bensalem and Lower Southampton along Brownsville Road.
Six dead bodies were found in the basement of the Abt house, all shot in the head, some multiple times. The victims were Jack, 49, and Peggy, 48, Abt. Margie, 19, andKathy, 12, Johnny Jr., 13, Margie’s boyfriend,Gary Engle, 20.
The family dog was shot dead, too.
Retired Bensalem Police officer David Clee Sr. was the first officer on scene, but only because he was headed to his Fleetwood Avenue home for dinner Friday night when a 21-year-old neighbor flagged down his patrol car.
Michael Abt was frantic, Clee recalled. He found blood on the kitchen and living room floors and a bloody sweatshirt. Nobody was home, but the family cars were in the driveway. The dog was missing, too.
Clee was familiar with the Abts, but he had not been in the home before until he followed Michael inside. He noticed the blood in the kitchen, then checked the rooms including the one that Michael didn’t.
Clee parted the saloon-style doors leading to the basement and shined his flashlight down the stairs and saw the first three bodies. When Michael asked what was wrong Clee said someone was dead.
He told Michael he didn’t know who it was, but he recognized Jack Abt.
After Clee got Michael Abt out of the house, he called into police headquarters. The officer who answered thought he was pulling a prank, Clee said.
Trevose is a small tight-knit community that was smaller and tighter in 1976. A place where doors were left unlocked, parents let kids camp overnight alone in nearby empty lots and secrets weren't kept for long.
Already a rumor was spreading faster than spilled Pepsi that someone was dead at the Abt house.
Ed Allahand, 70, lives not far from his childhood home on Hollywood Avenue, the street behind Fleetwood Avenue. He was childhood friends with Michael Abt and his older brother Clifford.
When his father got home from work he said it looked like every cop in Bensalem was at the Abt house. All the neighborhood streets were blocked off.
“You couldn’t get near the place,” Allahand said in a recent interview.
The police chief assigned a uniformed officer to accompany Bensalem Detective Bob Eckert when he questioned neighbors that night, the retired detective said in a recent interview.
Some residents answered their doors brandishing weapons. At some houses Eckert had to show his police badge to convince people he was a cop.
Eckert lost track of how many people he interviewed on the first night, but everyone told him the same thing, they didn’t see or hear anything suspicious earlier, he said.
Even the people in a small Cape Cod style home less than 100 steps across from the Abt family’s four-bedroom split-level.
At that house, Eckert finished his interview with Mrs. Geschwendt and her husband, but before leaving asked if anyone else lived there, he said.
His words still hung in the air as Eckert heard a door open. A skinny young man wearing glasses, a white undershirt and pants appeared in a bedroom doorway.
Something about the way George Geschwendt, 24, an unemployed U.S. Navy washout, answered questions struck Eckert as weird.
His responses were clipped and disinterested. Geschwendt didn’t ask what happened to the Abts or if they were alright, which are typical questions people asked in Eckert’s experience.
The detective made a mental note that something seemed off about this Geschwendt guy.
Trevose residents mourn five Abt family members as murder investigation intensifies
Hardware stores sold out of door locks. Strangers were met with suspicion. Even Dave Clee’s wife, Donna, had her brother stay over while her husband was out looking for the Abts killer.
But the fear that saturated Trevose didn’t keep people from attending the St. Patrick’s Day funeral and burial for the family at the Philadelphia church where Jack and Peggy were married.
Bensalem police were among the hundreds of mourners. Authorities weren't buying the murders were a random act, Clee said. But they also could find no reason someone would want the Abts dead.
Jack was a Boy Scout Master who worked for the phone company. Peggy, had a full-time job at the Internal Revenue Service, coached Margie’s baton twirling team and was the godmother of a neighbor’s child.
Kathy and Johnny Jr. were in middle school.
Margie, a Center City file clerk, had dated Garson “Gary” Engle for two years. Engle, a full-time delivery truck driver, ate dinner at the Abts house every night.
The only plausible motive police had was a revenge killing perhaps tied to the oldest Abt child, who police knew was involved with drugs, Clee said.
But Clifford Abt, 23, was locked up in Bucks County jail when his family was slaughtered. Authorities released him for the funeral and police guarded him and Michael during the services.
Bensalem's chief had Clee use his personal video camera to record the funeral in case the killer showed up.
When Canavan reviewed the old police case files about the murder investigation for her book, she learned the killer didn’t attend the funeral.
He was at a job interview.
George Geschwendt nearly committed the perfect crime. How police got him to confess
Every morning Abt investigators gathered to review what they learned the previous day. At one of those meetings, Eckert brought up his interview with George Geschwendt.
“Then, lo and behold, George’s name comes up on the stolen gun list,” Eckert said.
Bensalem police didn’t have the murder weapon, but they knew it was a .22-caliber gun. When they pulled the stolen gun reports they found one Geschwendt filed.
He reported the .22-caliber revolver stolen the same day he bought it, one week before the murders.
The report raised a red flag, so Geschwendt was asked to come into the police station for an interview the day of the Abt funeral.
He showed up wearing a suit. When investigators asked if he was at the services, Geschwendt responded he was at a job interview.
Geschwendt answered police questions about the murders and passed a lie detector test. But that wasn’t the last time he would talk to police about the Abts.
Five days later a couple boys fishing in the Neshaminy Creek found a .22-caliber revolver. It was turned into the Lower Southampton Police Department and secured in an evidence locker there.
No one knew that police were searching for the gun used to kill the Abts. Bensalem hadn't put out an alert about it, Eckert said.
The missing .22-caliber gun came up in a conversation about the murders between a Lower Southampton and a Bensalem cop at the Trevose Fire Station, Eckert said. The gun was retrieved and its serial numbers matched the Geschwendt's missing gun.
The Bensalem detective arranged to meet the boys at the creek, and officers pulled unspent ammunition and a pair of ear protectors out of the mud near where they found it.
Now police had the suspected murder weapon, but nothing putting it in Geschwendt’s hands.
A Bucks County detective with more polygraph experience was brought in to handle the second interview with Geschwendt. This time he failed the polygraph, but it wasn’t enough to arrest him.
What they needed was a confession.
Two detectives rapid fired questions at Geschwendt. Did one of the Abts do something to him? Help them them understand? What was his side of it? What did the family do to him?
The strategy worked. Geschwendt unfurled a list of alleged grievances, harassment and bullying at the hands of the Abts, blaming mostly the oldest boys, his former childhood friends.
Clifford and Michael were his primary targets, he told them. He didn't know the last victim, Gary Engle.
In a matter-of-fact tone, Geschwendt unwound an intricate detailed account of how he carried out his personal vendetta.
After he saw the last Abt leave that day, he walked across the street, used the gun to break a window on the side door, unlocked the door and walked into the kitchen.
Over the next 11 hours, he waited on a piano bench in the living room, he shot each victim in the head moments after they walked in. Afterward, he mopped up the blood and dragged the victims into the basement next to the kitchen.
Johnny Abt died first, shortly after the school bus dropped him off at 3:15 p.m.
The sound of the gunshot brought the family’s Saint Bernard, Heidi, down stairs and running straight for Geschwendt, who while caught off guard, fired and fatally wounded her.
Peggy, Kathy, Jack and Margie were killed in that order. Gary Engle was killed shortly after he arrived around 6:30 p.m. to pick up Margie for dinner at Rustler Steak House to celebrate their second anniversary as a couple.
Geschwendt said he would have stayed until midnight for the last two Abts, but the phone kept ringing and he started to worry that someone heard the gunshots. He walked out the rarely used front door around 7:15 p.m.
When researching her book, Canavan learned from police and court records how Geschwendt meticulously planned the murders starting around Thanksgiving. Authorities never found a shred of physical evidence directly connecting him to the crime, other than his own words.
“If George had kept his mouth shut, he probably could have gotten away with it,” Clee said.
Was George Geschwendt insane? What his trial revealed
Retired defense attorney Richard Fink, a 27-year-old public defender who had never tried a murder case, agreed to represent Geschwendt in the highest profile murder trial since Levittown hammer-killer Mary Mamon in 1969.
Fink described his client as clearly smart, socially awkward, uncomfortably quiet and emotionally withdrawn. The kind of guy that you could push and push, but didn’t think he’d ever push back, Fink said recently.
Geschwendt entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, but Fink knew he faced an uphill fight. His client clearly wasn't mentally sound, and then he learned the man experienced significant childhood trauma.
His sister told Fink about the abuse they experienced at the hands of their father, who abandoned the family. He ordered his wife not to hold George when he was a toddler. One Christmas day he threw away their toys. He tried to hit George with the car multiple times.
Geschwendt's mother refused to talk with his lawyer about her former husband and their family life until one day a frustrated Fink yelled at her and threw a pen at her and it hit her in the chest.
“She threatened to file an assault complaint,” he said.
Fink quickly realized the only possible defense was showing jurors his client’s nightmare childhood as the catalyst for his mental illness and stunted social development.
He hired the two best forensic psychiatrists in the country, who diagnosed his client as a paranoid schizophrenic, Fink said. But when he asked if they thought Geschwendt could be cured, both started laughing, he said.
“It would take intensive daily psychotherapy for decades,” one told Fink. “And I wouldn’t want to be the one who did it.”
On the opening day of the trial in July, 1976, Fink stood before the jury and spoke in graphic detail about Geschwendt’s childhood abuse.
Three times the prosecutor objected. Each time Fink was warned not to talk about his client’s childhood. The fourth objection, Common Pleas Judge Paul Beckert threatened if he continued he’d put Fink in jail for contempt.
Every day it was shoulder-to-shoulder in the county's largest courtroom where the trial took place. During witness testimony a bunch of Michael’s and Clifford’s friends made crude comments and “zeet-zeet” sounds imitating an electric chair.
The Abt brothers sat behind the defense table where they talked loudly about Geschwendt throughout the trial, Canavan and Fink said. The brothers would look at jurors and shake and nod their heads depending on what witnesses said.
Fink's Hail Mary defense strategy fumbled. Witnesses testified how Geschwendt's words showed he knew right from wrong. He had no remorse over killing six people, only that he didn’t get the ones he intended.
A lead detective said that Geschwendt said if convicted he would spend every day in prison thinking about how he could escape and kill Clifford and Michael.
The courtroom erupted in cheers in the gallery and calls for order from the dais afterthe jury found Geschwendt guilty on all six counts of first-degree murder, The scene was repeated the next day when Geschwendt was sentenced to death six times.
The applause was relentless. Someone screamed, “George got the hot squat,” Canavan recalled. Another yelled, “Geschwendt will burn in hell.”
Sheriff deputies encircled Geshwendt as he shuffled out of the courtroom, but two friends of the Abt brothers still attempted to shake his hand.
Canavan remembers thinking how strange it was that these young men were making fun of a young man who killed people because they made fun of him.
His conviction didn't seem to surprise Geschwendt, Fink said. He warned him upfront there was virtually no chance he’d be found not guilty.
“I don’t think I can get you an acquittal,” Fink remembers saying. “Not only did you kill six people but you killed a dog — a Saint Bernard — named Heidi.”
The guilty verdicts didn’t surprise Fink, either. The Abts seemed like a really decent family. His client was not even slightly sympathetic.
“I never saw any emotion. I don’t think he had emotion in him. I don’t think he knew what emotions were,” Fink said. “My question still is, Would someone who was sane do that? How can you actually be sane?”
After 50 years, why do the Abt murders still fascinate us
The month after Geschwendt was sentenced to death, his family home was sold, county property records show. The property has changed hands three times since 1976.
The next year Pennsylvania ruled the death penalty unconstitutional,and Geschwendt's six death sentences converted to life without parole.
About 20 years after the infamous trial, Fink recalled that the former DA Ken Biehn, who became a Bucks County judge, showed him a letter Geschwendt wrote him from prison asking to reverse his life sentence to death.
Geschwendt died at the Pennsylvania Correctional Institution at Waymart in Wayne County on May 22, 2020. He was 68.
His cause of death was failure to thrive and "major neurocognitive disorder," according to the Wayne County Coroner's Office. He was cremated, but no information was available regarding the location of his remains.
Without family support, Michael and Clifford Abt were left unprepared for the adult responsibilities thrust upon them and soon lost control of their lives. The family home was sold at a sheriff sale in 1984, according to county property records.
Clifford continued using drugs, which put him in and out of jail before he died in 1989 at age 37.
At 72, Michael Abt has outlived his family and their killer, but it has been a 50-year struggle with mental health, legal, health and substance abuse issues that put him in and out of jail, psychiatric hospitals and homelessness.
He now he lives in a small Penndel apartment with a roommate. He vehemently denies that he or his family harassed Geschwendt.
Retired Bensalem detective Bob Eckert calls Florida home, but he can find himself drifting back to Bucks County and that unforgettable murder.
“For me it’s the why. How did it get to that point? How can you be friends with kids and then you want to kill? It’s hard to comprehend,” he said in a phone interview. “The only way to explain it is mental illness, but he wasn’t acting absolutely crazy. He was absolutely methodical.”
When he looks out his windows David Clee sees the Abt house. It is a neighborhood landmark used to direct visitors turning off Dara Faith Drive, he said.
Three families moved into the house over the years, county property records show. The people there now didn’t know the history until after longtime residents told them, Clee said.
But no matter who lives there, it’s still called the Abts house, he said.
“A lot of the people who remember it now are the children; they’re all like 50 and 60 years-old. A lot of kids that were Michael’s age are in their 70s,” Clee said. “They all remember and they all still live around Trevose.”
Crime and Court Reporter Jo Ciavaglia can be reached at jciavaglia@gannett.com
This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: The Abt family's 1976 murdered shocked Trevose. New book reveals details
