Tom Donaghy | Atavist Magazine | September 2023 | 1,531 words (5 minutes)
This is an excerpt from the issue. Episode 143 “Who killed the Fudge King?”
fudge sold Copper Kettle’s was so creamy, so sweet, so incomparable that many candy shops on the Ocean City boardwalk didn’t even sell fudge because it just didn’t make sense. During summer vacations to the Jersey Shore in the 1970s, my father would take his brother and me there as a treat. A cute girl in a pinafore greeted us outside with a tray of free shavings. We loaded her stuff until her smile became nervous, then we headed inside. When we actually put the magic cube into our little mouths, we got as high as a child would be allowed to get.
For decades, the Copper Kettle has been in my head as a kind of landscape from my childhood memories. The salty air coming from the ocean, the glistening container of melted fudge, and too much sugar all at once. Then, during the pandemic, the family decided to return to the Jersey Shore for my mother’s birthday so everyone could gather outside. I told my brother that we should go back to the Copper Kettle. Then my brother told me that the store had long gone out of business. He also had some information: What happened to Harry Anglemeyer, the man behind Fudge.
In the early 1960s, Harry owned several Copper Kettle Fudge shops along the coast. His shop was so respected that Harry was widely known as the Fudge King. He was in negotiations to build a fudge factory when he was brutally murdered on Labor Day 1964. It took his Willy Wonka-ness to the next level. His body was stuffed under the dashboard of a Lincoln Continental. , we parked at an after-hours nightclub called Dunes. The case was never solved.
I spent the next two years sorting through the mountain of whispers and accusations surrounding the murder. At first I was just curious, but the more I learned about Harry, beloved by friends and strangers alike, the more I wanted to identify his killer.
I combed through blogs, Facebook groups, newspaper archives, and thinly veiled fictional accounts of the crime. For years, a veritable “Jersey Shore QAnon” flourished around the murder, raising questions of culture, class, sexuality and power hierarchies, as one local resident put it. I discovered a plausible myth, a ton of red herrings, and finally something that seemed to be true.
Nearly 60 years later, no one wanted to hear it. When I visited Ocean City while reporting for this story, a store owner who was talking about Harry Anglemeyer lowered his voice and said, “You know he was murdered, right?”
I admitted that I did.
As a warning, she replied, “If you sneeze in this town, everyone will hear you.”
The Fudge King had no qualms about flaunting his wealth and became one of the richest men by miles.
Harry Anglemeyer, stocky charmer Originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Born in 1927. His high school summers were spent in Wildwood, New Jersey, where he apprenticed at Laura’s Fudge Shop. He was told this was a bit mean. he didn’t care.
He dropped out of high school to join the Navy, serving for two years at the end of World War II, then returning to Shore in 1947 to open his own fudge shop. At the time, Ocean City looked postcard perfect. Located on a barrier island about 11 miles south of Atlantic City, the 10 blocks at its widest point are lined with boarding houses, deep porches with wicker lockers, and striped canvas awnings to soften the summer sun. It was. The resort called itself, and still does, “America’s Largest Family Resort.”
Author Gay Talese, who grew up there, once described Ocean City as “founded in 1879 by Methodist ministers and other teetotalers who wished to establish an island of temperance and civility.” Prohibitionists remain. To this day, you cannot buy alcohol within city limits. Or enjoy a cocktail at our restaurant. Or go to a bar because there’s no bar. If you want to bend your elbows, you’ll have to belong to one of the few private clubs that allow it. Before crossing the Ninth Street Bridge into town, you can also stop by Circle Liquor Store in Somers Point to import your own adult beverages.
You might think that such a challenge would encourage at least superficial abstinence and civility, but in 2017 USA Today In this article, Ocean City was considered the drunkest city in New Jersey. It was and still is a place of contradiction.
Just like Harry Anglemeyer was a man of contradictions. He donated generously to civic causes and charities, including religious ones. He became a member of the city’s planning commission by order of the mayor. He joined Freemasonry and the Chamber of Commerce. He became friends with prominent men and their wives, inviting them to social events when their husbands were busy. He socialized with local notables, including the Kelly family of Philadelphia. The Kelly family had a vacation home in Ocean City, where Grace Kelly visited first as a child, then as a movie star, and then as a princess. Harry was held in such high esteem that in September 1964, 1,500 people gathered at Godfrey-Smith Funeral Home to view his body. Businessmen, politicians and socialites paid their respects and filled the venue with flowers.
Many of them also knew another, less civil side of Prince Harry. When he wasn’t pleasing his family with fudge or charming the local elite, he loved to go out. He closed the bar. He was a regular at the Atlantic City racetrack, where he raced horses. He spent time at a nearby Air National Guard base. In the summer of 1964, he appears to have acquired boyfriends in both places.
In fact, Harry was a bit of a wimp.
That’s what everyone knew. He was 37 years old, handsome, never married, and dressed elaborately. He had a small dog that he acquired on his trip to Fort Lauderdale, but it was probably “too obvious,” he confided to a friend. He once had a girlfriend who wondered why they didn’t have sex. Apparently she was the only one in the dark. The large suite of airy, ocean-view rooms above the Copper Kettle on the promenade, where he lived during the summer months, was frequented by men both famous and strange.
Harry had no trouble hiding this, which is surprising given the pre-Stonewall and post-war pinko homo panic. In the early 1960s, men were expected to find a girl and put a ring on her, especially in a small town like Ocean City, which had a population of about 7,500 people during the off-season. Especially handsome men with killer smiles, fitted jackets, and penny loafers that sparkle like onyx.
However, one thing saved Harry from over-watching – for a time, anyway. He was an entrepreneur and increased the appeal of the boardwalk. He saw the future, and that may have served as his shield. Other local managers ignored his sexuality. They wanted even a small piece of his magic.
Harry placed a shiny copper kettle in the window of his shop on the promenade, poured liquid fudge into it, placed teenage boys with bronze skin and sparkling white teeth on top of it, and placed a large wooden I grabbed the paddle and continued stirring. Outside on the promenade, children watched, panting, their faces cracked by the sun, their bare feet covered in sand, their eyes moist and hungry. They really wanted that fudge. At night, even after the last box had been sold and the store closed, the kettle remained pin-spotted from above like a Ziegfeld girl.
Money poured in like a tide. Soon Harry also opened stores in Atlantic City, Sea Isle City, and Stone Harbor. The Fudge King had no qualms about flaunting his wealth and became one of the richest men by miles. He bought a two-story colonial home in Ocean City’s most exclusive neighborhood, the Gardens, where he lived during the off-season. He owned two cars, a Lincoln Continental whose body was later found, and a Chrysler Imperial, which he purchased several months before his death. death.
The most amazing thing is the dazzling ring he got. Five emerald-cut diamonds, totaling approximately 8 carats, are set on a white gold band. Its value was about $10,000, almost $100,000 in today’s dollars. Harry wore it everywhere. That was a pretty big deal. With the exception of a few families, including the famous Kelly family, who made their fortune in brick construction, Ocean City was a largely working-class resort town. Tourists and people who live there year-round may have only seen such jewelry on TV, worn by people like Zsa Zsa Gabor. Or Liberace.
Harry’s success was the subject of fascination and envy, but by all accounts, he shared his wealth with others. He frequently bought dinner for his staff. He borrowed money from his friend and told him to pay it back over time. (After his death, his family found a drawer full of loan papers.) He even delivered a brand new clothes dryer to a young mother struggling in a bad marriage. She cried because she knew there was at least one good person in the world.
Most people said this about Harry. How good, generous, kind, fun-loving and curious he was. But in the summer of 1964, they noticed something else about him. Fudge King was uncharacteristically nervous.