Sunday, March 10, 2013
Family received threatening phone calls after she went missing.
Amy L. Pugner chatted on the phone with her sister as she was painting her new apartment in Washington, PA, where she had recently moved, on June 8, 2010. That was the last time that Amy's sister spoke with her. Amy, a Latrobe native, had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and had a history of drug abuse. Her family considered the move a good thing—something that seemed to indicate that Amy was getting her life together, leaving her demons behind and heading in the right direction. No one is sure when Amy was last seen, but it was likely June 9 or 10, 2010. Her family members became alarmed when, a few days after that last phone call, a man used Amy's cellphone to make several threatening calls to them. He demanded money from them and told …
Sunday, February 17, 2013
She was last seen or heard from in June 2011, just after she moved back to Pittsburgh from Florida.
Amanda Marie Koller had moved back to the Pittsburgh area from Orlando, FL, in May 2011. The 23-year-old did not establish or maintain a permanent address in the few short weeks after her return, according to her mother. On Sunday, June 12, 2011, she was stopped by Pittsburgh police and cited for operating a vehicle without a valid inspection and also without an emissions inspection. Her car, a purple 2005 Scion TC, has a Pennsylvania license plate and also one from Florida, both of which expired in 2011. The license numbers are Pennsylvania GLH 0116 and Florida ANA 4580, according to the Pennsylvania Missing Persons website. Following the police stop, Koller has not been seen nor heard from since. She is described as 5-feet to 5-foot-5 …
Sunday, February 10, 2013
The man's death was ruled a homicide.
An Independence Township resident was hitchhiking on Old Route 40 in Donegal Township, Washington County, at about 9:20 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 18, 1972, when he spotted the badly decomposed body of a man. The body was down an embankment, about 65 feet south of the roadway. Its skeletal remains were found in a brier thicket, near a small trash dump, about two miles west of Claysville Borough. It was estimated that the body had been there for about 8 to 10 weeks. The man's death was ruled a homicide, according to the Pennsylvania Missing Persons website. The man had gunshot wounds in his left torso, possibly from a .22-caliber weapon. While details about the man's appearance and clothing are many, there are no clues as to who he was, where he …
Sunday, November 25, 2012
These cases from the Pittsburgh area did not have a happy ending, but finding those missing persons might have brought closure to families.
As early as this July, people in the law enforcement community knew that the remains of Amanda Sue Myers of Pittsburgh had been identified through DNA comparison. However, it was only about a week ago when Pittsburgh police finally released the news. In July, two separate sources told Patch that Myers had been identified but that police wanted to hold off on releasing information until some interviews had been conducted. Amanda, who was 22 years old at the time of her death, was last seen alive in Pittsburgh at the end of 1999 but may have been in Florida and Tennessee as late as April 2000. She was not reported missing until 2007, according to the Pennsylvania Missing Persons website. Known unofficially as Homestead Jane Doe, Amanda was …
Sunday, October 7, 2012
The newborn infant was left near a Hazelwood church. His mother was never found.
Easter Sunday is the day that Christians observe Christ's triumph over death and the renewal of life for all beings. That day of celebration turned dark just before Easter services on April 7, 1996, at St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Hazelwood. Two church members discovered the body of a newborn infant in an alley between the church and the adjacent property at Mansion Street and Gate Lodge Way. The baby boy seemed to have been swaddled in a pink towel but rolled out of it at some point during the chilly April night when the thermometer registered a low of 26 degrees. He was unclothed, next to the towel, when they discovered him frozen to death. Dr. Cyril Wecht, then-Allegheny County coroner, ruled …
40.40376
-79.942327
5319 2nd Ave, Pittsburgh, PA
St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church
/articles/unsolved-cases-baby-joseph
/locations/7970402
Monday, September 3, 2012
Patch has been featuring missing persons, homicide victims and the unidentified dead with open case files, but today, we are honoring the labors of those who work these cases by sharing some solved ones.
When someone goes missing, there's usually a large effort by law enforcement, family and friends to find him or her. When someone is murdered without a known suspect, police and relatives try to find out who did it. And when a body is discovered, and no kin claim it, advocates who work on such cases push to link circumstances or DNA to bring them home. In honor of Labor Day, Patch is recognizing the efforts of all those who work to solve these cases, bring the missing and unidentified home, and provide closure to the families or justice for the victims of unsolved homicides. Included in that are the many people who give the missing and unidentified "temporary homes" on websites like The Doe Network or NamUs until they are found or claimed…
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Seneca Valley High School senior disappeared in 1981 after leaving work to buy cold medicine.
Michele Reidenbach smiled for the camera as she posed for her senior pictures on Sept. 22, 1981. A senior at Seneca Valley High School in Jackson Township, Butler County, Michele had saved up $100—tucked in a drawer at home—to pay for her class ring. The 16-year-old from Evans City Borough, like other seniors, had an exciting, final year of high school ahead. After school that day, she went to her part-time job at Mel-Den TV and Appliance, a store at 240 South Main St. in Zelienople Borough, where she addressed envelopes and wrote advertisements for the store's owners. At 4 p.m., she left her job to walk to a Rite-Aid located a half-block away to buy some cold medicine. A clerk at the store confirmed that she purchased the medicine and …
Saturday, August 11, 2012
The 1-year-old was last seen in the front yard of his West End home in 1986.
Little Jamie Martin Thornton was just more than a month shy of his second birthday as he played in the front yard of his home in the West End of Pittsburgh on Oct. 4, 1986. But when his birthday arrived on Nov. 12 that year, Jamie, whose nickname was "J.T," wasn't around to celebrate it. Some reports say that he disappeared in Chartiers Creek. There is very little information available on his case, other than the standard listings on Pennsylvania Missing Persons, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, NamUs and The Doe Network. Jamie is considered one of the "endangered missing." Today, he would be 27 years old. In a March 17, 2011, story, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported that Jamie's mother—Gloria Steffens, of Pittsburgh'…
Sunday, June 17, 2012
An elderly woman found over a hillside in Avalon was never identified.
The woman survived about eight decades on this earth, but her death gave no dignity to those years. On June 19, 1997, the mummified body of a petite black woman with short, curly, gray-and-white hair—only 5 feet tall and weighing only 100 pounds—was found over a hillside behind the Ponderosa Steakhouse at 920 Ohio River Blvd. (Route 65) in Avalon Borough. The woman, who was found inside of a blue sleeping bag, was wrapped in two black plastic trash bags—one tied over her head, one tied over her feet—then wrapped again in what authorities believe was a plastic mattress cover, according to the Pennsylvania Missing Persons website. Her head was lying on a pillow with a towel covering her face. Her body was covered with a green blanket. She …
40.495547
-80.066551
920 Ohio River Blvd, Pittsburgh, PA
Ponderosa Steakhouse
/articles/unsolved-cases-avalon-jane-doe-81d271cc
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Saturday, June 9, 2012
In 2007, a serial killer confessed to killing the Robinson Township teen, missing since 1977—and claimed her body is 'unrecoverable.'
Ranee Ann Gregor was just nine days away from turning "sweet 16" the evening of Oct. 21, 1977, when she and boyfriend John Feeny left her residence on Clever Road in Robinson Township and were believed to be headed for a pizza parlor. They made it as far as a gas station, where they were last seen at about 10 p.m., but they never made it home. The next morning, Feeny, a 17 year old who lived on Maple Street in Coraopolis Borough, was found slumped over the armrest of the rear seat of his blood-splattered van. He had been shot once in the neck at close range with a shotgun. The vehicle, with its engine still running, was parked on a secluded dirt road known as a lovers' lane—off of Crescent Drive near Pittsburgh International Airport in …
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9:30 pm on Monday, October 8, 2012
Billie yes it was homicide as you don't leave a baby outside in the cold wrapped in a pink towel when it is below freezing,. Did you not read what Cyril Weck said that killed the baby? People from all over the United States use Cyril Weck as a coroner, as he is one of the leading ones in the US. If this monster would of called CYS, dropped the baby off at the hospital or the Police Station this … more ›