<p>During the early 20th century the portion of Avoca to the east of Interstate 81, near the Wilkes-Barre Scranton International Airport, was a mining community known as Brown's Patch. Like most mining patches among the anthracite fields of Pennsylvania, Brown's Patch was home to many struggling, impoverished families. </p><p>In the 1920s, one such family who called Brown's Patch home was the Castners, who occupied a small, one-story house on Dawson Street. It was inside this house where one of the most gruesome murders in the history of Luzerne County occurred.</p>
