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The 82-year-old was found beaten to death in her Dark Hollow Road home in Pipersville on Jan. 25, 1968, according to state troopers.
She was discovered by a Bell Telephone repairman who had come to check the line and a neighbor who let him in, the Allentown Morning Call reported in a 1974 retrospective.
They found the phone off the hook downstairs and Swope dead in her bed upstairs, the newspaper wrote. She had been beaten with a broom handle and then a standing coatrack, the Morning Call reported, and her cause of death was ruled blunt force trauma, according to troopers.
Police suspected robbery as a motive, but neighbors told the Call that Swope "had little money and lived frugally." Her house had been ransacked by the time her body was discovered, the newspaper noted.
Swope was often up until midnight watching television and rarely left her home in the final years of her life, according to the 1974 report.
She was born around 1886, when the total Bucks County population was under 70,000, the Philadelphia Phillies were playing as the Philadelphia Quakers, and Pennsylvania was one of only 38 states in the union.
Anyone with information is asked to call PSP in Bethlehem at 610-861-2026 or submit an anonymous tip online.
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