Communities like Ashville and its environs seldom experience crimes as horrific as what occurred Sept. 27 at the residence of John Sr. and Roberta Frew in Allegheny Township, Cambria County, about four miles west of the Blair County line.

Usually for small, rural residential communities such as the area in question, people are hard-pressed to remember a crime almost as violent or gruesome.

Not so for Ashville area residents about 50 and older.

For those people, the darkness of a December night in 1971 revealed a crime so violent that, had residents been allowed to witness the scene, their belief in the humanity of man would have been shaken.

It was the night of Dec. 7, 1971, that Raymond Watt of Cresson found the body of his father, Augustine T. Watt, 76, on the floor of the elder Watt’s kitchen.

Augustine Watt had resided alone in a house along a dirt road in an area known as Skunk Hollow, approximately two miles south of Ashville, also in Allegheny Township.

A trail of blood on the walls and floor in rooms leading to the kitchen provided silent but vivid testimony to the violent struggle that had preceded the victim’s death. The victim had been strangled with a piece of electrical cord, his throat had been cut to the extent that his head had nearly been cut off, and he had been struck on the head with a wooden mallet.

The motive for the crime, which was carried out by an Altoona man and an accomplice from North Carolina, was theft of money and guns. Both of the men arrested for the crime were convicted of first-degree murder and given life prison sentences.

It took police nearly three months before enough evidence was compiled for the Altoona man’s arrest, but investigators say the crime at the Frew home appeared to be a clear case of home invasion and a murder plot carried out by the Frews’ daughter, Josephine Ruckinger, along with her husband, Jeffrey Ruckinger.

The Ruckingers resided in Blandburg.

Those who died as a result of Friday’s incident were the two Ruckingers and Roberta Frew and the Frews’ son, John Frew Jr., both of whom were killed by the Ruckingers.

The Ruckingers were killed by John Frew Sr., who was able to retrieve a .22-caliber revolver from a rear bedroom and fire at the two intruders after they had shot his wife and son.

While part of the motive for the home invasion likely was the Ruckingers’ hatred for the Frews – Josephine Ruckinger had been estranged from her parents for about 20 years – why the Ruckingers had chosen Friday night to confront the Frews might not be so easy to ascertain conclusively.

Today’s Ashville area residents are left pondering how something so violent could have occurred so close to home, just like residents of that area in 1971 also were shaken by the Watt killing.

The difference is, in that crime four decades ago, many people might have been fearful initially about whether Watt’s killers might have designs to target anyone else.

Regarding last week’s incident, Cambria County District Attorney Kelly Callihan said she doesn’t anticipate filing any charges against John Frew Sr., who she said was being regarded as a victim of an attempted homicide.

Crimes like the one in 1971 aren’t supposed to happen in a small, friendly, generally law-abiding community like the one in question.

Likewise, what happened last Friday is equally a rarity for such an area.

As were residents in 1971, current residents are justified in being puzzled and saddened about what has occurred – something so senseless and incomprehensible to the values of their day-to-day lives.