Small-Town Cops in the Crosshairs

The sniper killings of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, policemen William Davis and Richard Posey shocked the American public in November 1972 and garnered national coverage on the major news networks at the time. Fifty years later, this book, the first to cover the slayings, details the cold-blooded ambush of the two small-town law enforcement officers by a member of the murderous Johnston gang. Using a high-powered rifle from a sniper’s nest, Johnston gang member Ancell Hamm gunned down the officers in the early morning hours of November 15, 1972, just outside the town’s police station. Using period, local reportage and new interviews with law enforcement officials who worked the case, the meticulous investigation of the crime by members of the Pennsylvania State Police, FBI, Chester County detectives, and local police departments is recounted in detail, as is the trial. The book also details the lives of the victims, and the loss suffered by their families in this small southeastern Pennsylvania town. The foreword was written by former Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice William H. Lamb, who, as Chester County district attorney in the early 1970s, prosecuted the case. The book also includes new interviews with the convicted killer.