This article was published in the Butler Eagle on Feb. 10, 2022.

January 2022 the 120th anniversary of a infamous jail break and following shootout in Butler County that captivated the nation.

A pair of condemned brothers made a daring escape with the aid of a warden's wife who was in love with one of them. Their flight across a snowy landscape by horse-drawn sleigh ended in a gun battle with police on a Butler County road.

The story of the Biddle brothers and the warden's wife, Katherine Soffel, sounds like it would make a good movie. And it did in 1984 when “Mrs. Soffel” was released with Diane Keaton as Katherine Soffel and a young Mel Gibson as Ed Biddle, the career criminal who seduced her. Critics and the box office were not kind.

But Butler historian and storyteller Bill May, who spent years researching the story and is planning to write a book on the escape, believes the real story is much more compelling.

May said Ed Biddle and his brother, Jack, two career criminals from Amherstburg, Ontario, were in the Allegheny County Jail in 1902 and condemned to soon hang for the murder of Thomas Kahney, a Mount Washington grocer, during an attempted robbery of his home.

May said his grandfather was in Butler when the wounded Biddle brothers were brought to the Butler County Jail and Mrs. Soffel was taken to the old Butler County Hospital.

The story fascinated May. “Everyone said Ed Biddle was the handsomest man that most people had ever seen. He was very intelligent.

“I wondered why a man with his intelligence, personality and looks was sentenced to hang,” said May. “I started writing a book. The story was really fascinating.”

May learned the Biddles were the sons of an American who fled to Canada to dodge the Civil War draft. Their childhood was such that they became career criminals specializing in robbing jewelry stores and other retailers.

After they, along with an accomplice named Walter Dorman, robbed an Erie jewelry store in 1900, they decided to lie low in Pittsburgh where another Biddle brother, Harry, was living as a law-abiding man with a job.

The Biddles, Dorman and a couple of girlfriends arrived in Pittsburgh just before Christmas 1900 and preceded to go on a crime spree.

May said the Biddles and Dorman committed 27 robberies in January 1901. After casing stores, they would break into businesses, usually jewelry and clothing stores, chloroform the occupants and rob the place. They became known as the Chloroform Gang for their use of the drug to subdue their victims.

Their luck ran out on April 12, 1901, when, while breaking into a grocery store, they were confronted by the owner, Thomas Kahney, who was shot and killed.

The landlady at the Biddles' boarding house, already suspicious of their late night comings and goings, reported them to the Pittsburgh police.

Dorman was arrested at his boarding house without incident. But when police went to arrest the Biddles, a fight broke out and Pittsburgh Detective Patrick Fitzgerald is shot and killed.

During their trials, May said, Dorman turned state's evidence, Ed was accused of killing the detective and Jack was charged with killing the grocer. After the Biddles were found guilty, they were condemned to hang. Ed was 24 and Jack was 28.

The Biddles were locked up in the Allegheny County Jail while they exhausted their legal appeals. Finally, the dates of their executions were set: Jack on Feb. 22, 1902 and Ed on Feb. 27. May said they had asked the governor that they not be executed on the same day.

But while they awaited their date with the hangman, May said Ed Biddle was working his charms on Katherine Soffel, the wife of Peter Soffel, the prison warden.

“Ed Biddle was one smart criminal and manipulator,” May said. “The Rev. Donehoo, the prison chaplain, called Ed one of the most intelligent and fascinating men he had ever met in his life.

“During his trial, women lined up and fought over getting seats. He was incredibly charismatic.”

A Catholic priest asked the 35-year-old Mrs. Soffel to minister to the Biddle boys.

“She was older than them, so the priest thought she would be a motherly figure to them,” May said.

But soon, Soffel was exchanging love letters with Ed and conspiring to smuggle saws and eventually guns to the Biddles, using her own father, a guard at the prison, as an unwitting go-between.

“Katherine Soffel was not what you would call a pretty woman, especially by a 24-year-old man,” May said. “She was 35 with four kids and buck teeth. She was not a woman Ed would have found attractive.”

But she was instrumental in their escape plans, May said, the only drawback was her insisting she come along with them when the Biddles finally broke free.

The escape took place at 3:30 a.m. Jan. 30, 1902. Jack Biddle pretended to be ill and when a guard brought him medicine, Jack grabbed the guard's arm through the bars. Ed pushed through the bars of his cell that he had sawed through earlier and attacked the guards. In the melee, one of the guards is shot.

The Biddles overpower the guards, lock them in a cell and make their way to the warden's quarter where they chloroform the warden, and then the Biddles and Mrs. Soffel flee the jail.

They plan to go back to Canada. They take a street car to the end of the line in Perrysville, then break into a dairy farm where they steal a horse and sleigh.

The fugitives stop at the Snyder Hotel in Cooperstown for breakfast where a fellow guest recognizes them and alerts police when they leave. The Biddles and Soffel pass through Butler and then head up New Castle Road and stop in Mount Chestnut at the Stevenson Hotel where they just miss a party of Butler and Pittsburgh police who believe the fugitives are heading to Prospect.

May said that after leaving Mount Chestnut, the Biddles and Soffel get lost and find themselves on what is now Old Route 422 where incredibly they meet with the police party returning from Prospect.

“They literally run into one another on the road," May said. The ensuing gun fight is shrouded in controversy.

“Ed Biddle was a lot of things, but not a murderer. He shot himself in the chest," May said. "Jack Biddle had numerous wounds from the police. Mrs. Soffel shot herself in the breast.”

The police loaded them on sleighs and brought them back to Butler. The Biddles were taken to the Butler County Jail, and Mrs. Soffel to the old Butler Hospital.

"The Biddles died a miserable, painful death in the Butler jail. They were conscious in jail cells next to each other,” May said. They died in the evening of Feb. 1.

The story goes that Ed Biddle had to have a closed-casket funeral to prevent women from sniping locks of his hair.

Mrs. Soffel survived after she was operated on Feb. 25. She was put on trial, found guilty and sent to prison. Her husband divorced her and moved with the children to Ohio.

On her release from prison after serving two years, May said, “she had a sad life living on the North Side of Pittsburgh.” She died in 1909.

According to the Heinz History Center, Mrs. Soffel lived and worked as a seamstress in the North Shore neighborhood of Pittsburgh. In addition to her sewing abilities, she also profited from her role in the Biddle saga. In a traveling vaudeville era show entitled, “The Biddle Boys,” Soffel elected to play herself.

The story of her flight with the Biddles was big news all over the nation, garnering headlines as far away as San Francisco.

“Thomas Edison made a short film on the Biddles which showed in Butler. There was music written about the Biddle boys. Mrs. Soffel actually starred in a play that the police shut down,” May said.