Scott, Allen Bodine (1954)

Killing and manhunt

Ellen was last seen leaving her 133-year-old Lower Bank homestead with her grandson on July 18. Her decomposed body was found July 23 in a gravel pit about three to five miles away. Autopsy reporting described repeated .22-caliber gunshot and German-bayonet wounds. Scott’s bloodstained car had been abandoned in Camden with a .22 rifle and bayonet inside.

A search centered on the Pine Barrens and cranberry bogs near Mays Landing after two girls reported seeing him near Route 40. A nearby William Kilgore cottage at Cologne was burglarized for a double-barreled shotgun, ammunition, canned food and $12. Police also guarded relatives’ homes after a rifle shot entered industrialist Russell E. Cramer’s Ocean City house. Reports said Scott had previously demanded money from Cramer and attempted to kidnap Cramer’s daughter, after which Scott spent about two and a half years in a mental institution.

Letters signed “The Sniper, Allen Scott,” including one postmarked Houston October 1, went to the Associated Press and South Jersey newspapers. The writer discussed his education and politics and thanked the press; police examined the material for prints and handwriting. Scott had escaped by bus through Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and hitchhiked around the country.

Capture and stated motive

A state trooper eventually encountered and arrested Scott during routine patrol. Lieutenant Claude Patterson said Scott gave a two-hour statement admitting the killing and the shot at a relative’s house. Scott told reporters he opposed Ellen’s proposed sale of Allen House because he wanted it preserved for his mother. Another report says he later pleaded not guilty, so the confession account and formal plea should be distinguished. The court record below establishes that the case ended without a criminal trial.

Ellen’s family associated Allen House with Captain John Carlisle, later Captain Jesse Bodine Allen and generations of the Allen family. Those genealogical claims come from contemporary feature reporting and require confirmation against deeds and probate records.

What happened in court

Scott was never brought to trial. A Burlington County jury found him incompetent to stand trial in February 1955, and he was committed to the Vroom Building at Trenton State Hospital. Court records describe a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. On October 7, 1968, the murder indictment was dismissed on the ground that he had been legally insane when the killing occurred. He remained confined and later pursued several federal cases over the conditions and legality of that confinement.

The long second story: confinement and patients’ rights

Scott’s federal litigation began with complaints he filed himself. His claims concerned medication without consent, lack of treatment, hospital conditions, and continued confinement after the indictment disappeared. In 1976 the Third Circuit sent the cases back for further proceedings; it did not order his release or decide that every allegation was true. Scott v. Plante (1976).

The case returned after the Supreme Court asked the appeals court to reconsider it in light of Youngberg v. Romeo. In October 1982, the Third Circuit again required consideration of treatment and a less restrictive placement within the hospital, and a new trial on damages. This turned the aftermath of a Lower Bank killing into a sustained dispute about institutional care. That remand is a procedural outcome, not evidence of a later release or damages award; those remain gaps in this account. Scott v. Plante (1982).