Former 6abc reporter Annie McCormick’s new book details South Jersey socialites’ 1929 deaths

In the summer of 1929, Moorestown was rocked by the tragic shooting deaths of two young socialites in what officially was ruled a murder-suicide. The saga resulted in a scandal rife with money, alleged corruption, and death, and it captured sensational headlines for years.

Nearly a century later, though, the case has been all but forgotten. In fact, former 6abc reporter and Moorestown native Annie McCormick had never heard of it — until a 2021 New York Daily News article. Now, with the release of McCormick’s Restless Ghosts: Murder, Suicide, and the Case that Wouldn’t Stay Buried by Camino Books, the specters of Ruth Wilson and Horace “Reds” Roberts Jr. may yet stir again.

“It’s crazy I never heard of it, growing up in Moorestown and doing what I do,” said McCormick, who left 6abc in December after 13 years at the station. “I started looking into it and got hooked. I thought, ‘How many legs does this case have?’”

Many, it would turn out. And they range from bootlegging and political corruption to the unspoken truths of high society in South Jersey and the desperation of Depression-era America. Even Ellis Parker, the famed Burlington County detective once known as “America’s Sherlock Holmes,” plays a role.

At its core, McCormick’s Restless Ghosts has its roots in a case that dates back to June 1929. Early one morning that month, Wilson and Roberts — wealthy, twenty-something socialites from two of South Jersey’s most prominent families who until recently had been engaged to be married — were found dead in Wilson’s bedroom in her family’s Moorestown home.

Wilson’s father, John Wilson, a prominent attorney and real estate developer, found the pair, nude and apparently suffering from gunshot wounds to their heads. Both died a short time later, with an investigation led by Parker later finding that the fatal shots came from a .22-caliber handgun discovered at the scene.

Ruth Wilson, investigators found, had been shot in the head twice. Roberts, meanwhile, had at least three gunshot wounds to his head — and officials quickly ruled that the situation was a murder-suicide that occurred in the wake of Wilson calling off the engagement. According to official reports, Roberts shot Wilson in the head before firing multiple shots into his own while distraught over the state of their relationship.

No autopsies were initially conducted. In the days and weeks that followed, rumors and speculations about the pair’s deaths cropped up in news coverage, with some reports insinuating that the situation was a double murder — one that involved Wilson’s father, though no such claims were ever substantiated.

While McCormick runs down the tragic history of the deaths in Restless Ghosts, she is careful to not take a particular side on what may have happened back then. Instead, the circumstances are thoughtfully, meticulously recounted from multiple perspectives, leaving the readers to decide. Still, some inconsistencies and details, McCormick said, give her pause.

“It doesn’t make sense that someone could fire into their head multiple times,” McCormick said. “But at the same time, who else was there?”

In 1929, officials and members of the public had similar questions — so much so that a coroner’s inquest was launched that resulted in the exhumation of Wilson‘s and Roberts’ bodies weeks after their deaths. But even after the extensive questioning of investigators, relatives, and friends and the coroner’s discovery that Roberts had four bullet wounds to his head, the original conclusion was upheld.

And so, it seemed Wilson‘s and Roberts’ ghosts were left to rest for eternity, victims of a tragic murder-suicide over unrequited love. At least, until the death of Bradway Brown, a similarly high-profile socialite who died from gunshot wounds he suffered at his home in nearby Cinnaminson in 1933.

Brown, a childhood friend of the victims and a former suitor of Wilson’s, was found dead in his home with multiple gunshots. Parker also headed up the investigation in this case, and initially told the press it was a suicide — a tactic McCormick reports was a method to throw the media off and prevent Brown’s actual killer from becoming too alarmed.

Brown’s death stoked the fires of conspiracy, with rumors abounding that he had confessed to acquaintances that he had known who Wilson’s and Roberts’ true killer was. The rumor mill even said Brown had likely been behind anonymous phone calls to Wilson’s father accusing him of being the perpetrator.

Again, though, none of these allegations were officially substantiated. And despite Brown’s death resulting in another investigation into Wilson and Roberts’ deaths, this time a grand jury probe, the original conclusion was again upheld: Roberts killed Wilson, and then himself.

As the investigation into Brown’s death wore on, Parker gradually backed away from his suicide theory. Ultimately, three men were arrested — a group of gangsters Parker called the “After Dinner Burglars.” The trio, reports from the time indicated, had targeted Brown’s Cinnaminson home for a robbery, but were surprised by his arrival. One man who was found to have pulled the trigger was sentenced to life in prison, and had no known connection to the Wilson and Roberts deaths.

Parker, meanwhile, ultimately died of a brain tumor in federal prison after having been convicted of masterminding the abduction of an attorney in order to coerce a confession in the 1932 kidnapping and murder of Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr., otherwise known as the Lindbergh baby.

In 2026, meanwhile, McCormick’s Restless Ghosts has the benefit of hindsight, and faithfully recreates the case largely from archival newspaper accounts. McCormick remains surprised that she had never learned of the case until starting work on the book, noting that the families involved had a lasting impact on Moorestown. The homes where the murders occurred, she said, remain in pristine condition.

“These were all places I know and have driven by a million times,” she said.

Still, while she didn’t necessarily set out to solve the case once and for all, its mystery remains intriguing for the author. After all, with the crime so far in the rearview mirror of history, virtually all of the people directly impacted are long gone. As a journalist, McCormick is particularly perturbed by that aspect of the project.

“The most frustrating part is that I can’t ask anyone,” she said. “I have questions, and I don’t have anyone I can follow up with. I wonder if this was a present-day case if there would be more finality.”