Pennsylvania State Police seek tips in 1981 ax murder at Poconos bar

On a Saturday night in 1981, in a Delaware River town on the Appalachian Trail, Eddie Joubert lit a cigarette behind his haunted bar, and was killed with an ax.

Joubert’s Nov. 28, 1981, murder at the Bottom of the Fox Tavern in Delaware Water Gap, Monroe County, remains unsolved. Pennsylvania State Police in Stroudsburg recently asked the public to come forward with any information about the case.

According to Pennsylvania Crime Stoppers, Joubert, 46, left the crowded bar around 5 p.m. to retrieve firewood out back and was discovered dead hours later. Joubert’s case, according to late Philadelphia Daily News journalist and author Shaun D. Mullen was “yet another in a series of gruesome unsolved murders and puzzling deaths involving hippies, gays, and other people whom the authorities cared little about because they were considered to be lowlifes.”

Mullen, who died in 2019, authored the book The Bottom of the Fox: A True Story of Love, Devotion & Cold-Blooded Murder about Joubert’s case. He described Joubert as a former Teamster from North Jersey who “fell hard for the Poconos.”

“He was an easy mark for anyone needing a favor and a magnet for the disaffected, including Vietnam vets who had found their homecoming to be as alienating as the war itself,” Mullen wrote in the Pocono Record in 2004. “He advocated causes that were ahead of their time, including cleaning up the Poconos’ polluted waterways, curbside recycling, and public transit.”

According to Mullen’s book, The Bottom of the Fox staff said the bar had an “oppressive” feel and they often heard voices after closing time.

Joubert, according to a 1982 story in the Hazleton Standard-Speaker, “stirred controversy in the community by attracting musicians and young people that older residents found disturbing.” That community came together, however, after Joubert’s murder to host a musical festival to raise money for a private investigator. More than 200 residents attended Joubert’s funeral, the newspaper reported, with musicians marching down Main Street in a “New Orleans-style jazz procession.”

Last month, Jessica Joubert told BRC 13 news she didn’t go back to the popular tourist town much, concerned that her father’s killer was still out there. She said her father had been acting strange in the days before his death.

“He was an innovative thinker and he really cared about people,” she told the station.

The Bottom of the Fox Tavern is now called The Sycamore Grill.

Anyone with information is urged to contact Pennsylvania State Police Stroudsburg Barracks at 570-220-8475 or anonymously contact the Pennsylvania Crime Stoppers toll-free at 1-800-472-8477 or online at www.crimewatchpa.com/crimestoppers/316

A $5,000 cash reward is being offered in the case.