Michael Abt: Sole Survivor of the Bucks County Murders

Michael Abt is the only living survivor of the 1976 Bucks County murders, in which a neighbor named George Geschwendt shot and killed six members of the Abt household at 3711 Fleetwood Avenue in Trevose, Pennsylvania. Michael, then 21, was out that evening and came home around 8 p.m. to find blood inside the house. Fifty years later, at 72, he lives in a small apartment in Penndel.¹²

Who Was Killed That Day

John F. Abt Sr., 50, and his wife Margaret — known in the neighborhood as Jack and Peggy — were described as devoted parents who worked long hours and volunteered in their community.³¹⁴

Two of the Abt siblings were not in the house. Michael was out for the evening. His older brother Clifford was incarcerated in the Bucks County jail on unrelated charges.²

The Killer and the Grudge

George Geschwendt was 24 years old and lived across the street from the Abt family on Fleetwood Avenue. He had once been a childhood friend of Michael and Clifford, but the friendship ended years earlier after a juvenile incident in which Clifford and Geschwendt were arrested for placing wood and rocks on train tracks.⁵ Investigators later described Geschwendt as having nursed a grudge against the Abt brothers that amounted to a personal vendetta.¹

Michael Abt has maintained that he and his family never harassed Geschwendt, contradicting the grievance Geschwendt used to justify the killings.²

How the Killings Unfolded

On the morning of Friday, March 12, 1976, Geschwendt broke into the Abt home while the family was out. He waited inside for roughly eleven hours. As each person returned home over the course of the day, he ambushed them individually and shot them at close range with a .22-caliber revolver. After every shooting, he dragged the body to the basement so the next person through the door would see nothing out of place.⁶

Geschwendt’s primary targets, according to investigators, were Michael and Clifford. Neither one came home that day.²

Finding the Bodies

Michael entered the house shortly after 8 p.m. and saw blood.⁴⁷³

Because the attack appeared to be aimed at the entire family, police feared Michael and Clifford could still be in danger. Officers protected both. Clifford was moved from the county jail to a holding cell at Bensalem police headquarters that night for his safety.⁵ At the funeral for the six victims on March 17, 1976 at St. Dominic Church in Philadelphia, police guarded both brothers throughout the service, and Clee videotaped the gathering so investigators could check whether a suspect had attended.³

How Geschwendt Was Caught

Detectives had almost no forensic evidence and relied on interviews. Residents were frightened enough that officers sometimes slid their badges under doors to get people to talk.⁶ The case broke when Geschwendt reported his gun stolen from his bicycle at the Neshaminy Mall. Two children fishing in Neshaminy Creek later pulled a .22-caliber revolver out of the water that Geschwendt had failed to throw far enough from shore. Its serial numbers matched the gun he had reported stolen. He was arrested five days after the funeral and eventually confessed.²

Geschwendt was charged with six counts of first-degree murder. At his July 1976 trial before Common Pleas Judge Paul Beckert, public defender Richard Fink entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. The jury rejected it and convicted him on all six counts. He was sentenced to death six times. After the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled the state’s death penalty unconstitutional in 1977, those sentences were converted to six consecutive terms of life without parole. Geschwendt died in prison on May 22, 2020, at age 68, at the State Correctional Institution at Waymart in Wayne County. The Wayne County Coroner’s Office listed the cause of death as failure to thrive and major neurocognitive disorder. He was cremated, and the location of his remains is unknown.²

Michael Abt’s Life Since

Surviving did not spare either Abt brother. In a 2026 interview, Michael described the toll directly: “It’s something I never got over. It totally f—– my whole life up. He killed seven people that day. I just didn’t stop breathing.”¹

The family home on Fleetwood Avenue was sold at a sheriff’s sale in 1984. Michael spent the following decades struggling with substance abuse, health problems, homelessness, and stays in psychiatric hospitals and jail.² Clifford fared no better. He battled drug addiction and cycled in and out of incarceration for the thirteen years after the murders. At one point he lived in the former Geschwendt family house after it was converted into a rental property. He died in 1989, three weeks after his 37th birthday, and is buried in Resurrection Cemetery in Bensalem.⁵

As of 2026, Michael lives with a roommate in Penndel, in Bucks County, roughly a dozen miles from the house where his family was killed.²

1
Northeast Times. Survivor Recalls Devastating Loss of Family, 50 Years Later
2
Bucks County Courier Times. Abt Mass Murders of Bucks County
3
Northeast Times. Book Recounts A Killer in the House, 50 Years Ago
4
The New York Times. Six Killed in Home Near Philadelphia
5
The Intelligencer. 50 Years Later: Abt Family Murders
6
LevittownNow. Abt Family Murders: Reporter Returns to the Crime Scene Decades Later
7
Main Line Today. Killer in the House Book