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Friday, October 03, 2003
Corrections manager chronicling convicted slayer's saga
Pennsylvania man didn't stand trial for local killings

Sam Shawver
Times-News Staffwriter

CUMBERLAND It was Sept. 22, 1969, and the next day would be 2-year-old Lori Mae Peugeots birthday. She had just finished some birthday shopping with mother Linda at Kings Department Store (now Giant Eagle supermarket) in LaVale.

Mother and daughter were living with relatives in Bel Air while Lindas husband, Gerald, was doing a tour of duty with the U.S. Navy.

But this would prove to be Linda and Loris final shopping trip.

From a vehicle he had stolen that day in Wheeling, W.Va., 26-year-old Stanley Barton Hoss anxiously watched as mother and daughter crossed the LaVale parking lot. He was apparently carrying the same handgun that he had used to kill a police officer in Verona, Pa., three days earlier.

As Lori Mae and Linda climbed into their late-model Pontiac GTO, Hoss, brandishing the weapon, walked up to the car and demanded a ride.

The last words heard from Linda were, All right, but you wont hurt us, will you?

Hoss ordered the woman to drive him to Canada, but somewhere along U.S. Route 219 in Pennsylvania, concern for her daughters safety caused Linda to pull off the roadway.

When she told Hoss that she could go no farther, he shot and killed her, dumped her body into the trunk, and placed Lori Mae in the back seat.

Some days later he also murdered the child.

The bodies were never found, and Hoss, who was captured in Iowa within two weeks and later confessed to the kidnapping and murders, was never brought to trial for killing Linda and Lori Mae Peugeot due to a Maryland court ruling that authorities violated his right to a speedy trial.

The Maryland Court of Special Appeals said Hoss rights were trampled on and the kidnapping charges against him must be dismissed, said Jim Hollock, author of a new book tentatively titled, Its a Hanging Matter, chronicling the criminal life of Hoss.

Hollock is a unit manager for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections at Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh.

This is not a Texas Chainsaw Massacre type of book, he said. Although Stanley Hoss is a common thread throughout the book, I can talk about issues like media coverage, capital punishment, ethics and penal systems. We can discuss law officers of those days who were often local boys with few qualifications.

In his book, which is about half-finished, Hollock traces Hoss, who grew up in Tarentum, Pa., from his earliest misdemeanors to a daring escape from an Allegheny County (Pa.) jail where he was being held on a rape charge, and on to the murderous rampage that led to the deaths of Verona police officer Joseph Zanella and Linda and Lori Peugeot.

Although he was never tried for the Peugeot murders, Hoss was convicted for the cop killing and sentenced to life in prison.

But his killings didnt end there.

In 1973, at Western Penitentiary, Hoss conspired with fellow inmates in the brutal murder of corrections officer Lt. Walter Peterson.

He was transferred to an isolation facility in Philadelphia where, in 1978, Hoss hanged himself.

He started out as a local thug in the Pittsburgh area, Hollock told teacher Roni Ringlers criminal justice class at Fort Hill High School on Thursday morning. Hollock was in the Cumberland area to gather more background information for his book.

Hoss was a sixth-grade dropout who became a burglar, thief and ruffian, but was not considered dangerous then, said Hollock. But within eight months in 1969, Hoss was on the FBIs Ten Most Wanted list and became the subject of an intense nationwide manhunt.

He said the Hoss story has continued to resurface at various times over the past 34 years.

We hear about murders all the time, Hollock told the students. We watch the evening news and hear that someone has killed someone else. Then we get up from the television, go make a sandwich and soon forget the name of the killer as we go on with our lives.

But some murders reach such notoriety that they stick with us, hanging like a mist over the mountains, he said. That seems to be the case with Stanley Hoss.

Sam Shawver can be contacted at sshawver@times-news.com.