The "Babes in the Woods" were found 80 years ago today, Nov. 24, 1934, in Penn Township, Cumberland County, near what is today the entrance to Pine Grove Furnace State Park.

According to a story from PennLive files: Elmo J. Noakes, a fruit company employee from Roseville, Calif., arrived in Pennsylvania with his family with no money and job.

It is believed that Noakes, whose wife died in 1932, left his hometown on Nov. 11, 1934, with his three children and his niece, Winifred Pierce, in a car he had bought for $46 a day earlier.

Investigators believe Noakes killed his daughters, Norma Sedgewick, 12; Dewilla Noakes, 10, and Cordelia Noakes, 8, on Nov. 21 rather than let them starve.

After leaving the girls' bodies in the woods, Noakes and Pierce drove west, abandoned their car between McVeytown and Altoona and hitchhiked to Blair County.

On Nov. 23, Pierce sold her coat, the couple's last possession except for the clothes they were wearing. With the $2.55 Pierce received, Noakes bought a .22-caliber rifle from a second-hand store.

A day later, Noakes used it to kill Pierce, then take his life. Their bodies were found in the Spring Meadow station on the Hollidaysburg Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad in Blair County about the same time the bodies of the three girls were spotted in the woods in Cumberland County.

Autopsies determined that the children had not eaten for 18 hours before their deaths.