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Nearly 300 laborers consisting of Hungarians, Slovakians and Polanders were encamped in make-shift shanties between Laurel Run and Fairview Township in 1894.
				The laborers working for the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company were blowing up boulders and moving rocks and dirt for the purpose of double-tracking the mountain cutoff linking Avoca to Mountain Top by rail.
				&ldquo;At present, they have reached a point about two and one-half miles from Oliver Mills and one mile from Fairview Township and are within a short time of completing the excavations for the entire route,&rdquo; the Wilkes-Barre Record reported Oct. 29, 1894.
				As the laborers of the different ethnic groups settled for the night on Oct. 28, 1894, a shanty holding 58 workmen exploded, killing three men and injuring eight people.
				&ldquo;Three dead and mangled bodies and eight injured men is the terrible sequence of as diabolical a plot as was ever concocted in the brain of the fiend. Such is the story of a mad scheme of robbery or revenge that was consummated on the Wilkes-Barre Mountain near Laurel Run yesterday morning at 3:30 o&rsquo;clock,&rdquo; the Record reported.
				Killed were Frank Nowaske, 23, Michael Colletz, 40, and George Lilotely, 28, all Hungarians immigrants.
				&ldquo;At the place mentioned and in its vicinity the workmen are encamped in shanties&#8230;there are four camps or settlements in which these foreigners live, each consisting of a frame structure, in which from fifty to sixty men are huddled. The structures are constructed in the cheapest way, just large enough to hold the sixty people when huddled together in the most compact form,&rdquo; the Record reported.
				Was the explosion a robbery or revenge by a disgruntled laborer?
				Several months would pass until seven people were arrested, five men and two women.
				&ldquo;The memory of the most fiendish crime in the history of Luzerne County, the wrecking of the Hungarian shanty on the mountain cut-off, is still fresh in the public mind. It was the most dastardly act that human mind could conceive and filled the community with horror,&rdquo; the Wilkes-Barre Record reported about the arrests on June 11, 1895.
				Arrested were Frank Shaffer, Nelson Miller and his wife, Sarah Miller, James Miller, Hester Brace, George Jordan and John Bird. Sarah Miller was the sister of Hester Brace, who lived with all the accused in a railroad box car. The men were employed as laborers for the railroad.
				A confession given by Shaffer, which led to the arrests, was published in the Wilkes-Barre Record. Motive to the explosion was foreigners taking jobs away.
				&ldquo;I know that what I say will put me in the penitentiary but I&rsquo;m gwine to tell the truth. These men led me into it after getting me drunk. They got the dynamite some time before, part of it from the Boston tunnel and part of it from the Lehigh dynamite shanty. They hid it in the woods till the night of the explosion,&rdquo; Shaffer&rsquo;s confession reads.
				Separate trials were held for Nelson Miller and Shaffer.
				A jury on Sept. 27, 1895, convicted Nelsen Miller of first-degree murder and was sentenced to death. While efforts were being taken for a new trial based on perjured testimony from Shaffer, Nelson Miller died March 6, 1897, while jailed at the Luzerne County Prison.
				A coroner&rsquo;s jury determined Nelson Miller&rsquo;s death was &ldquo;caused by a blood clot to the heart, induced by confinement and worry,&rdquo; the Wilkes-Barre Record reported March 10, 1897.
				Following a week long trial in April 1896, a jury convicted Shaffer of first-degree murder and was sentenced to death.
				Attorney Mary L. Trescott, the first woman to be admitted to practice law in Luzerne County, was successful in earning the release of the two charged women, Sarah Miller and Brace, on March 22, 1897. Trescott took up their cases by filing a Habeas corpus petition claiming they were not brought to trial within two criminal court terms.
				District Attorney Daniel A. Fell withdrew the cases against the remaining men, James Miller, George Jordan and John Bird, citing insufficient evidence to proceed to trial. They were released from jail on May 3, 1897.
				Shaffer&rsquo;s death sentence was commuted by the state pardon&rsquo;s board to life in prison in April 1897. In 1913, Shaffer&rsquo;s life sentence was commuted by Gov. John K. Tener and released from prison on parole.
				Shaffer&rsquo;s pardon was supported by Fell, the district attorney who prosecuted the cases and who later became a county judge.
				&ldquo;The crime was committed in 1894 when (Shaffer) was a mere boy, having rather limited mental capacity and being dominated by one Nelson Miller, a man of superior intelligence and enormous physical power,&rdquo; Fell wrote to Gov. Tener, according to a 1913 report of the state board of pardons.

Look Back: 1894 explosion killed four railroad laborers in Laurel Run