On September 20, 1977, David A. Hamilton, a 28-year-old electrician, was found shot to death inside his home in Beaver Township. He had been killed with a .38-caliber firearm. His wife, 28-year-old Linda Hamilton, was missing; their two young children were found in the house, unharmed and apparently having slept through the incident.

Investigators initially treated Linda as a suspect and sought her arrest, but the family car was later located near a truck stop where she worked. At that scene officers observed a man’s bootprint and a woman’s bare footprints with drag marks, suggesting Linda had been taken from the vehicle. Ballistics linked the gun used to kill David Hamilton to the killing of milk truck driver Frank Ziegler a week later in Marshall Township, indicating a possible serial offender.

In June–July 1978, long-haul trucker Edward Arthur Surratt was identified as a suspect and was captured in Florida; he later received multiple life sentences there. While Surratt confessed in 2007 to a number of murders, including those of David and Linda Hamilton, Linda’s body has never been recovered and the Pennsylvania murders were not prosecuted.