Sunday, November 11, 2012
The mother said her daughter had been abducted on the South Side but, later, the mother's boyfriend confessed to burying the toddler in Brookline.
The image of a little girl on a grocery shopping trip with her mother—then suddenly gone. That was happened the day of March 9, 1982 when Melody Childs Thomas told police that her daughter, Nicole Lynn Bryner, 3, had been abducted from a shopping cart at the Giant Eagle supermarket on the South Side of Pittsburgh. Though there were extensive searches, no trace of Nicole was ever found. Then, in 1986, Timothy Widman, Childs' boyfriend at the time, allegedly confessed he had punched Bryner and accidentally killed her. He told police that he and Childs' buried the body in a wooded area along Timberland Road in Brookline. Police searched unsuccessfully for the body. Without it, prosecutors could not pursue the case. But in 1988, a Superior …
Sunday, September 2, 2012
Patch has been featuring missing persons, the unidentified dead and homicide victims with open case files, but today we are honoring the labors of those who work these cases by sharing some solved cases.
When someone goes missing, there's usually a large effort by law enforcement, family and friends to find them. 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 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. Here are 10 …
Sunday, June 24, 2012
The 8-year-old boy disappeared from near his McKees Rocks home in 1991.
Willie Majewski was only 8 years old about 4 p.m. on Nov. 9, 1991 as he gathered his fishing gear and walked toward Chartiers Creek, which feeds into the nearby Ohio River. He wasn't reported missing for several hours after he disappeared. His mother was out playing bingo and didn't realize he hadn't come home. Willie's fishing gear was found later behind the Eat'n Park restaurant—along the banks of the creek, about 100 yards from a camp where homeless people stayed. His equipment had not been disturbed and there were no signs of a struggle at the scene. Witnesses reported seeing Majewski in the McKees Rocks Plaza. One person saw him talking to a scruffy man in a store. Another said an unkempt man pulled him into a burnt-orange Nova. The …
40.463886
-80.057262
301 Chartiers Ave, Mc Kees Rocks, PA
/articles/unsolved-cases-william-majewski
/locations/7310404
Sunday, May 13, 2012
The 19-year-old has been missing since saying she was headed to Florida with a boyfriend.
Alivia Christine Kail, a 19-year-old living in Mt. Washington, went to her brother's home in West Mifflin on March 5, 2011, to gather some clothes. Alivia told him she planned to move to Florida with her boyfriend, Alexander Lorenzi, of Pittsburgh's Esplen neighborhood. When her family was unable to contact her by phone for several days, they became concerned. Then Alivia's phone was shut off for non-payment. When Lorenzi reappeared in Pittsburgh without Alivia and gave conflicting accounts as to her whereabouts, the family's worry deepened. Lorenzi was arrested on March 30, 2011, for unrelated drug and gun charges. While searching Lorenzi's home and vehicle, police found three spent shell casings, a pink tote containing woman's clothing…
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Each weekend, beginning May 12-13, Patch will review a missing person, an unidentified body or a cold case homicide victim from Allegheny or Washington counties.
The Pennsylvania Missing Persons website features the somewhat-haunting sketch of "Beth Doe" on its homepage. Nancy Monahan of Penn Hills, who started and runs the website, chose the sketch because, in nearly four decades and despite social networking and modern forensics, no one has ever been able to determine where the woman came from or who she was. Monahan was intrigued in part because the woman would have been in her own age bracket. The details of the case are rather disturbing. The young woman had been dismembered and mutilated. She and her full-term, unborn child were stuffed in three suitcases and thrown from a bridge along Interstate 80 over the Lehigh River in Carbon County, PA. Police think the killer meant for the suitcases to…
