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Editor's note: This adventure originally ran in November 2011 on abounding Western PA Patch sites. Aback that time, several bodies accept appear advanced with added advice they feel can be accessible to the case, including abeyant suspects, accessible cartage acclimated and added information, which has been aggregate with Allegheny Canton assassination detectives. The character of the woman interviewed for this adventure is actuality withheld for her safety.
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The woman stood abandoned at about 8:30 a.m. on Nov. 23, 1977, at a Port Authority Transit stop in Wilkinsburg, cat-and-mouse for the bus that would booty her to her job in burghal Pittsburgh.
The 24-year-old had developed up in Wilkinsburg, and she and her bedmate had purchased a acreage on adjoining Rebecca Avenue, which they were remodeling. The bus stop was abutting by on Ardmore Boulevard.
As she waited in the arctic November air, a motorist pulled his car off the street, partially into an alleyway and assimilate the paved breadth of an auto adjustment garage—right abutting to her.
"To the best of my recollection," the woman said, during an annual aftermost week, "... he fabricated a advancement I did not appreciate."
Something about the man instinctually acute the woman's faculty of danger.
When she threatened to alarm the police, he fabricated a U-turn on Ardmore Boulevard and headed aback against the Parkway East. In 1977, there weren't claimed corpuscle phones—so accustomed out her blackmail would accept appropriate authoritative her way bound to a adjoining business, home or Johnston Elementary School, which was beyond the street.
She did not address the adventure to badge afterwards he left. But what the woman did do was to address bottomward the red-and-white Ohio authorization bowl cardinal and agenda that he was active a dejected car.
"I didn't anticipate about it anymore," she said.
About 2:15 p.m. that aforementioned day, Beth Lynn Barr, 6, larboard Johnston Elementary Academy on Franklin Avenue, which absolved an hour aboriginal because of the holiday.
She beyond the artery with classmates and began the two-fifths of a mile airing abandoned to her Princeton Boulevard home, branch up Ardmore Boulevard in the administration of the WTAE-TV studios—past the bus stop breadth the man had approached the woman hours before. Beth angry larboard assimilate Marlboro Avenue, afresh anon appropriate assimilate Traymore Avenue.
There, according to a witness, a man agitated a babe applicable Beth's description into a addled dejected auto with red-and-white authorization plates.
That was the aftermost time anyone saw her.
Beth's father, Charles, was a Wilkinsburg policeman. The badge force sprang into activity aback she didn't appear home from school.
That evening, Wilkinsburg badge agape on the woman's Rebecca Avenue aperture as they canvassed the neighborhoods about the school. She aggregate the advice about the man who had approached her that morning.
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Her description of the man and car appealing abundant akin that of the attestant who saw Beth actuality agitated to the car. Badge declared the doubtable as a white macho in his 40s, 5-feet-10 to 5-foot-11, average anatomy with average brown, coiled hair. He was cutting a gray accouterment and square, blue-tinted sunglasses.
"He would accept reminded me of addition with an appointment job," the woman said, abacus that he was possibly cutting a necktie. She additionally remembers "he was not an adorable person."
She was afraid that the badge didn't acquaintance her afresh about the appointment as the analysis continued.
"I never heard anymore about it," the woman said, acquainted it was added than a year afterwards aback they talked to her again.
Police anticipation they had begin the car complex at Conley's Motor Inn (now the armpit of a Home Depot) on Business Route 22 in Wilkins Township. The agent belonged to a car rental bureau based in the cabin and, according to records, had not been active out on the canicule surrounding the kidnapping. A chase of the dejected car with red-and-white Ohio plates angry up nothing.
Police from , Wilkins and added bounded departments helped Wilkinsburg admiral adjust the dupe abaft Conley's, which yielded no clues. Neither did a chase of the homes and dupe in Wilkinsburg.
On Dec. 10, 1977, there seemed to be a breach in the case. Badge arrested a McCandless Township salesman in affiliation with the kidnapping, but accuse were abandoned aback he accustomed an annual that he had been in Johnstown that day.
Both the salesman and his brother agreed to abide to lie detector tests. Lt. Robert Thomas, afresh administrator in allegation of the Wilkinsburg Badge Department, said in 1979 that he was not absolute that they anytime took the tests or, if so, what the after-effects showed.
A analytic had been alleged in anon afterwards the kidnapping, and some seven to nine others offered "visions" of Beth's whereabouts, including "water" and "grave markers."
In March 1979, Joseph Leonard of Monroeville stumbled aloft a partially credible skeleton as he absolved with his dog in the dupe off Johnston Road in Monroeville, beyond from the allotment of Restland Memorial Cemetery breadth the avoid pond is located.
There was no agnosticism it was Beth. Admitting brush, clay and leaves covered her skeleton, Beth remained dressed in the red pantsuit, dejected tennis shoes and checkerboard covering she wore to academy that November day.
Thomas delivered the sad annual to Donna and Charlie Barr, and their son James, at their Princeton Boulevard home actually 16 months to the day, aural the aforementioned hour that their babe disappeared.
The mounded grave appeared added accumulated than shoveled, above Monroeville badge Det. Willis Greenaway said at the time. He noted, according to the abomination lab, bodies sometimes credible afterward freeze-thaw conditions.
An dissection appear Beth had been stabbed several times in the chest, according to then-Assistant Arch Deputy Coroner Anthony Pankowski. He said the action of the skeleton was constant with Beth actuality asleep aback the time of her disappearance. Pankowski additionally said that there was no way to actuate if she had been sexually molested, admitting the lab was to run tests on her clothing.
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Some newspapers appear that the breadth adjoining to Restland Cemetery had been searched afterwards Beth's disappearance, but badge admiral at the time—Thomas; Harry Hodgins, who had been Wilkinsburg's arch in 1977; and above Monroeville Arch George Gregowich—concurred the breadth had never been searched.
The woman said badge tracked her bottomward at assignment and interviewed her a additional time, which she recalls was about the time Beth's anatomy was found.
"I said to them, 'What anytime happened?'"
They explained about archetype the car aback to the rental agency, which is about three afar active ambit from breadth Beth was eventually found. Aback the woman asked about the car, they told her the rental bureau administrator said it had never larboard the premises.
"I begin that actually astounding," the woman said. "Obviously, they begin the car. But the analysis never went anywhere.
"Frankly, that was the aftermost I anytime heard from them."
Through the years, the woman has occasionally anticipation about the little babe who never fabricated it home.
Not connected ago, she and an old acquaintance talked about how they remembered activity to see "Walkin' Rosie," a apparition said to abode Restland Memorial Cemetery in Monroeville. The acquaintance recalled that Beth's anatomy had been begin adjoining to the cemetery —and that her analgesic had never been found.
That aforementioned acquaintance mentioned a algid case adventure about Beth's annihilation that appeared in Gateway Star Newspapers in 2003. The woman looked it up online and begin herself mentioned as the "woman at the bus stop." But as she apprehend further, article agitated her.
The adventure acclaimed that the day Beth was abducted, three newspapers in the above Dardanell Publications annual chain—the Penn Hills Progress, Churchill Breadth Progress and Wilkinsburg Gazette—all agitated a adventure about the one-year ceremony of the beheading annihilation of Barbara Lewis of Penn Hills, whose anatomy was begin in a debris bin in the Blackridge Civic Association parking lot in Churchill.
Lewis' accouterments had been begin in a abounding breadth off Princeton Boulevard in Wilkinsburg, the artery breadth Beth lived. And afresh came the book that hit a little too abutting to home for the woman—the one that said that Lewis, too, had been cat-and-mouse at a bus stop on Connected Road in Penn Hills on the morning she was murdered on Nov. 19, 1976.
"There were aloof too abounding coincidences," the woman said. "There's got to be a connection."
In fact, there has been some belief that Lewis' annihilation was the aftermost in a cord of what is believed to be consecutive murders in western Pennsylvania amid 1976 and 1977.
And aloof a few weeks afore Beth disappeared, two boys walking in the dupe at Brady's Run Park begin the ashen charcoal of Stephanie Ann Boller of Beaver Falls, an credible assassination victim—and there were some similarities amid the cases.
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Some badge accept that Beth's abductor was acceptable a pedophile and that there ability not accept been a affiliation to the adventure at the bus stop beforehand in the day.
In retrospect, the woman feels actual advantageous that she was continuing on the commuter ancillary of the car that day, 34 years ago. She doesn't appetite to anticipate what ability accept happened if she'd been on the driver's side.
"That could accept fabricated a apple of difference," the woman said.
Looking back, the woman thinks Wilkinsburg badge "botched the case" by captivation on to it so connected afore axis it over to Allegheny Canton badge detectives and not accepting advice from added accomplished Pittsburgh badge detectives. She isn't alone.
A man, who articular himself as the son of a above Turtle Creek policeman, additionally contacted the columnist of this adventure afterwards seeing an annual of Beth's murder. According to him, his ancestor was at Keller's Hardware Store in Turtle Creek about the time of the kidnapping aback a man absolved in and bought a advertise and a few added items that aloft the policeman's suspicions.
The son said his ancestor alleged Wilkinsburg badge with information, but that no one anytime arrested out the lead. Had the man who kidnapped Beth connected forth Ardmore Boulevard, it is not out of the catechism that he ability accept been in Turtle Creek, demography the aback anchorage to Monroeville.
Allegheny Canton badge Assistant Superintendent Jim Morton said the canton has accustomed a admission to analysis algid cases and that there are three boxes of letters from the Beth Barr case. He said algid cases are never closed.
Eight months afterwards Beth was laid to blow at Woodlawn Cemetery in Wilkinsburg, the woman and her bedmate relocated to a abroad city.
"I consistently admiration why I confused abroad from Wilkinsburg," she said.
She ability accept answered that catechism several years ago aback the burghal breadth she had lived for added than 20 years started to feel "not so safe." That's aback the woman and her ancestors confused again.
"It's a shame," the woman said, apropos to the actuality that Beth's analgesic has never been found. "I still don't accept it's a absent cause. Someone's activity to appear forward."
Anyone with advice about the annihilation of Beth Lynn Barr is asked to alarm the Allegheny Canton Badge Assassination Division at 412-473-1300.
The author, , has covered the Beth Barr adventure aback the Nov. 23, 1977 kidnapping. Stories she wrote for Dardanell Publications from 1977-79 and Gateway Star Newspapers in 2003 are acclimated for antecedent actual here.
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Originally appear Aug 3, 2012.
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