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Churchill Borough

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Unsolved Cases: Barbara Lewis' Body Found a Mile from Home in Churchill

The murder of the 30-year-old secretary from Penn Hills has never been solved.

Long Road in Penn Hills gets a fair amount of morning rush hour traffic—school and Port Authority buses, along with commuters leaving their homes and heading for their jobs in Pittsburgh. Weekday mornings, at the end of Long Road, cars often form a line waiting to make a left hand turn at the Churchill Valley Country Club onto Beulah Road. As they drive up the hill, they pass the Blackridge Civic Association clubhouse and then, at the top of the hill, intersect with the Parkway East or Penn Avenue toward Wilkinsburg. When Barbara Jean Lewis graduated from Penn Hills High School in 1964, she had her eye on a secretarial career. Her dream to enter the business world came true. She was a secretary at the downtown Pittsburgh offices of …

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Unsolved Cases: William Sockel

Was the death of this Churchill man in 1975 a case of mistaken identity or just a burglary gone bad?

In his split-level home on a quiet street in residential Churchill Borough, William Sockel was following his usual routine the night of Feb. 5, 1975. Methodically, Sockel would drive into his garage using an electronic opener, walk to the gameroom level of the home, place his heart medications and a cane used to help with a bout of arthritis on the stairs in the foyer area, and get water from the gameroom so he could take the pills. It appears that was what he'd done the night of his death. He had left a men's clothing store in Monroeville Mall about 7:45 p.m.—the last place he was reportedly seen alive—as snow started falling outside. Former Allegheny County homicide detective Capt. Robert Meinert told the Pittsburgh Press in a story …

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