Mosaic Pieces

Accused Child Killer Becomes the Other Victim.... A child's murder and a rush to judgment still resonate more than fifty years later with lessons to be learned about American justice from an extraordinary murder case. The convicted murderer did his time, returned to his hometown of South Williamsport, PA, where the crime occurred, and yet the case against him refuses to retreat quietly into fading memories and a growing cache of obituaries of those who played prominent roles in this immorality play. The impact on him and his family resonates as tragedy for both the murder victim and the man convicted of the crime. This is a case study that is as much a generational story in more innocent times as it is about the murder of a twelve-year-old girl in a town known as the home of Little League Baseball. It started with the discovery of an inexplicitly fresh body of Jennifer Hill, the object of nine days of searching, deposited in a cornfield less than a mile from her backyard. There is one tragic realization from exploring the "mosaic pieces" of this intriguing case. Somebody got away with murder and, despite an impressive accumulation of exculpatory evidence widening cracks into chasms in the Commonwealth's untenable case presented in February of 1974, exoneration continues to elude a man sacrificed for political gain and career expediency.

Wes Skillings retired from newspaper journalism on April 1, 2011, after 38 years as a reporter, columnist and editor where, among his assignments for three different newspapers, he covered everything from municipal meetings to murder trials.

He is a Vietnam vet with a BA in English from Mansfield (PA) University, formerly Mansfield State College, where he won a national writing award with an essay in The Atlantic Magazine Creative Writing Contests for College Students.

As a journalist, he received numerous Keystone Press Awards from the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association (PNA)-fifteen of them over his last 11 years in the business. Eight placed first in the state in their respective categories.

His first award came years before, in 1980-a first place for Public Service from the Associated Press Managing Editors of Pennsylvania.

Additionally, he is a self-published author whose first book published in 2014 was about one man's triumph over traumatic brain injury ("A Matter of Recovery: The Story of C.B. Miller").

On October 7, 2022, Skillings published his meticulously researched book about small-town justice and its abuses stemming from the October 1973 murder of a twelve-year-old girl, Mosaic Pieces: Surviving the Dark Side of American Justice. In the summer of 2025, the book was republished under his own brand.

A father and grandfather, he and wife of 56 years as of February 1, 2025, Mary, live in healthy retirement in hometown Wyalusing, PA.