Back in Sloatsburg’s earlier days, before the NY Thruway sliced through and Pine Grove Lakes was built out, the village was more rural, especially in 1952. On October 25 of that year, Ramapo town clerk Robert Nugent and a friend drove off into the woods in an old jeep to get some hunting in. They never returned.
The murder of these two men remained a mystery for many years, until 1981, when a local man, John Youmans, was brought to trial. Youmans had originally been questioned about the shooting back in 1952. The police took his statement and he was released.
And so, the case of Robert Nugent and Charles Simpson really has two parts: the unsolved murders and the trial for the murders 28 years later.
“This is the 60th anniversary of the murder,” said Sloatsburg Mayor Carl Wright, who will act as host for a panel discussion of the incident on Tuesday, October 9 from 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Municipal Building. The panel will include Rockland County and Town of Ramapo historian Craig Long, former Sloatsburg and Harriman Police Chief Frank Dailey, Sloatsburg Historian Harrison Bush, retired Journal News reporters Bob Baird and James Walsh, and Chuck Stead, storyteller and environmentalist.
“Robert Nugent was a resident of our community,” Wright said. “He was a war hero. He lost both of his legs in battle. He returns to his home community, is elected town clerk for the Town of Ramapo, and unfortunately is murdered in literally his back yard.
It would be a shame to forget his memory — this panel keeps the memory of Robert Nugent alive.”
A massive search began for Nugent and Simpson when they failed to return from their hunting adventure just off Rt. 17 (see map). And that’s when the case went from missing persons to murder mystery — and when investigative mistakes began piling up.
Local legend William “Teeter Bill” Conklin was Sloatsburg police chief at the time and was among the first on the scene the day after the men disappeared. The chief found the two men shot to death, with a gutted deer on the ground between their bodies. Conklin put a call in to the NY State Police, who didn’t arrive at the scene for another six hours. In the meantime, the area where the crime occured became an odd carnival of sorts, with law enforcement and interested parties coming and going.
“There was a dead deer there and they believed they came up on a poacher,” said Wright, an aficionado of the case. Wright said Tuesday’s panel will explore theories about the case as well as unexplained circumstances and odd fragments of evidence. “It’s about ideas and viewpoints,” he said. “It’s also about the technology that we have today that we didn’t have back then.”
The murder remained unsolved for 30 years. But, much like a family secret, many locals had their own ideas about what happened in the woods that day. Eventually, John Youmans’s sister made a near bedside confession that her brother had come home that day and confessed to poaching and then killing two men who confronted him. Youmans went on trial in 1981 for the murders, which unleashed a whole catalogue of case theories.
In the end, it seemed too many loose ends existed to convict Youmans, and he was acquitted in an infamous Goshen trial.
As for the death in the woods of the two men. Some believe it was all about Charles Simpson, the bank president. Others believe that, as town clerk, Robert Nugent knew a little too much about too many things. And then there’s the simple, unsexy explanation that the two men just happened to drive up on another hunter who panicked and shot them dead because he’d killed a deer without a permit.
The Case of Robert Nugent panel discussion takes place Tuesday, October 9 at the Sloatsburg Municipal Building at 7:30 p.m. The public is invited. The panel will discuss the case as well as the validity of several theories, and try to reach a conclusion as to who is responsible for these murders.
