Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
A Philadelphia man made a name for himself in the middle of the 20th century<\/a> at the Jersey Shore<\/a> by opening a series of flashy candy shops.<\/p>\n He also made enemies for fighting blue laws<\/a>, and because he was gay.<\/p>\n On Sept. 7, 1964, Harry Anglemyer, the 37-year-old owner of the chain of Copper Kettle fudge shops, was found dead on the floor of the front seat of his Lincoln Continental.<\/p>\n Start of an empire<\/p>\n Anglemyer learned the fudge trade working summers at a Wildwood<\/a> shop.<\/p>\n After serving in the Navy at the end of War War II, the 20-year-old high school dropout opened his first fudge shop on the Ocean City<\/a> boardwalk in 1947.<\/p>\n The shop rose to prominence by churning out \u2014 by hand \u2014 pounds of creamy fudge<\/a> in the shop\u2019s namesake: real copper kettles.<\/p>\n Anglemyer opened several locations, amassed a fortune, and became civically involved.<\/p>\n He was an outspoken rabble-rouser as it pertained to the town\u2019s blue laws, which prevented most boardwalk businesses<\/a> from operating on Sundays, which were reserved for church business.<\/p>\n The bachelor was also indicted in 1963 on three counts related to his sexual behavior<\/a>, which was criminalized at the time.<\/p>\n By Labor Day 1964, he had been acquitted of one charge, but was awaiting trial on the other two.<\/p>\n Considering his penchant for ruffling feathers, and the prejudice against LGBTQ+ people at the time, some people were not surprised by what came next. <\/p>\n End of an empire<\/p>\n He was found beaten to death inside his car early Labor Day morning outside the Dunes, a rock and roll club in Egg Harbor Township, outside Ocean City. <\/p>\n Many have theorized<\/a> on the mystery, with some believing the crime was the work of an extortion ring that preyed on gay men.<\/p>\n A man who served time in federal prison for the ring was tried in Anglemyer\u2019s death in 1969.<\/p>\n Ultimately he was acquitted<\/a> when a star witness refused to take the stand.<\/p>\n After Anglemyer\u2019s death, his sister Elaine Stasak and her family ran the business. <\/p>\n By 1980<\/a>, the family counted five locations spread over the Shore in Ocean City, Avalon<\/a>, Sea Isle City<\/a>, and Stone Harbor<\/a>. But by turn of the 21st century, all the shops had closed, and the sun had set on the fudge empire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min A Philadelphia man made a name for himself in the middle of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285304,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[118922,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-285303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-harry-anglemyer-fudge-shops-death","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}