When unheard-of, rural communities come to the attention of
people around the world, oftentimes it means something terrible or
tragic has happened there.

Unfortunately, the small communities right here in northwestern
Pennsylvania are no exception.

“Murder in the Courtroom,” – a true crime book by John L. Young,
an Altoona native living in Warren, and Lyle J. Slack, a Warren
native now living in Los Angeles, set to hit bookstore shelves
Wednesday -ðis the story of one such tragedy.

Slack and Young met and started collaborating about a year ago,
Young recently told The Era. The result is a book that details the
never-before-told story of how a troubled marriage ended in
wrongful death -ðnot for the husband or wife -ðbut for the county
judge presiding over their divorce.

Former Warren County President Judge Allison D. Wade was shot to
death as he sat on the bench in his courtroom Jan. 13, 1954. The
shooter was Norman W. Moon of Connellsville, a World War II veteran
Slack said was described by those who knew him as “sweet,” “gentle”
and “shy.”

Reports indicate Moon was being charged for not paying spousal
support after he and his wife, Janet Schwab Moon, divorced. Shortly
after he was called in front of Wade, Norman Moon took a Colt
.45-caliber gun from his jacket and fired six shots at court
officials, ultimately killing Wade.

After escaping the courthouse, Moon tried to shoot and kill
himself as officers closed in for his arrest. Instead of
effectively committing suicide, however, Moon ended up in critical
condition in a hospital. He was later convicted of first-degree
murder and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to a
mental institution and then life in prison, records indicate.

Slack, a journalist and screenwriter, told The Era anyone and
everyone who grew up in the Warren area knew about the Moon-Wade
shooting. People were still talking about it when he was growing up
there in the 1970s, he said. But what didn’t make sense to him in
all that talking, he said, was why Moon would commit such a heinous
act over $30 a month in spousal support.

“I was perplexed by it,” Slack said, adding he would eventually
learn “there was a quite a bit more to it.” Years of research,
including interviews with people closest to the case -ðeven Moon,
himself -ðgave Slack the answers he needed.

Young said that while promoting his own true crime book, “Murder
at the Airport Inn,” he was often encouraged to tackle the infamous
Warren courthouse rampage. It was at about the same time that Brian
Nichols shot and killed a judge and three others in an Atlanta,
Ga., courthouse in March of 2005, Young said, he started
researching the Warren case.

“I had never heard of Norman Moon or Judge Wade,” Young said,
adding he was a reporter for the Jamestown (N.Y.) Post Journal that
following April. Before long, he had heard of Slack and his
research into the case and decided to contact him.

The two exchanged copies of their latest work, Young said, to
“get to know each other.” Young sent Slack a copy of “Murder at the
Airport Inn,” and Slack sent him a copy of a made-for-television
screenplay he wrote based on the Wade-Moon shooting titled “The
Dark of Norman Moon.”

Young said the lion’s share of Slack’s research, from 1987 to
1992, was critical in writing “Murder in the Courtroom,” as many of
the people Slack interviewed had died before Young got started on
the project last year. Young said Slack gave him a box of
3-by-5-inch cards, transcripts from hours of audio-taped
interviews.

“My task was to choose a direction to take the story,” Young
said. “He (Slack) had all the right stuff,” adding the interview
passages were “amazingly, brutally honest.”

For the most part, however, Slack’s research stopped where
Moon’s murder trial began, Young said. “I took up where he (Slack)
left off.” What Young referred to as “the long, strange journey of
Norman Moon,” started with a murder trial that lasted only a
week.

Moon was initially sentenced to death, and a legal battle
ensued. A “sanity commission,” Young said, determined Moon was
legally insane in 1957. At that point, he was transferred from
Western Penn prison in Pittsburgh to the Fairview Institution for
the Criminally Insane in Wayne County.

Reports indicate that during that transfer trip, Moon never
spoke, ate, drank or went to the bathroom, Young said. “The way I
see it,” he said, “he (Moon) came in and out of reality … it was a
weakness of the mind.”

Slack, who spoke with Moon in prison six to eight times during
the 1980s, spoke differently of the man. He said Moon suffered
serious emotional pain as a result of his wife’s infidelities. When
the marriage ended, Moon was ordered by the courts in
Connellsville, where the couple lived, to pay his wife spousal
support. When she moved back to her native Warren, she then sued
for support a second time through the Warren County Court, Slack
said.

He said Moon felt he was being “railroaded by the system,” and
that the unfair treatment had to do with political influence coming
from his wife’s family. Slack also said he thinks Moon looked at
the events of Jan. 13, 1954, as if they were acts from a scene in a
movie.

While the two authors may disagree about Moon’s state of mind at
the time of the shooting, it is undeniable that Moon had absolutely
no prior criminal record.

“He just snapped that particular day in 1954,” Young said of
Moon.

About six years after Moon was declared legally insane, court
officials again changed their minds. They ruled Moon had regained
his sanity and transferred him to Rockview Penitentiary in Centre
County to await execution.

During the 38 years Moon served on death row, Young said, he
applied for parole many times and was denied each time. When he
learned he had developed throat cancer, he refused treatment.
Slack, who had taken an active interest in Moon, said he would help
petition the parole board for Moon’s release and asked him to go
ahead with a surgery to treat his cancer.

The parole board at Rockview unanimously approved Moon’s parole
early in 1992, and Slack returned home to Los Angeles, Young said.
Moon started his race against time and went into surgery at the
prison as the documents legalizing his parole made their way across
the governor’s desk.

Moon lost the race, however, and died at Rockview, Young said,
the day after his surgery due to complications associated with his
cancer and the surgery.

Young and Slack will be making public appearances in the Warren
area starting Wednesday, the pair told The Era, including a lecture
and book-signing from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Warren Library.