There is no readily available clearinghouse for unsolved Allegheny County homicides, including those in the city of Pittsburgh, but organizations that track cold cases say there are likely hundreds of families in the region awaiting justice.
Project: Cold Case, a nonprofit that helps families bring attention to and advocate for the unsolved homicide of a loved one, includes more than 340 entries for the Allegheny County and Pittsburgh cases.
This is not an exhaustive list of unsolved homicides in the area, and cases are only included after they have been submitted by law enforcement or family members and verified by the agency. investigation, according to the group’s website.
The oldest case included is that of 23-year-old Michelle Moore, who, according to the entry, was found strangled in Larimer on May 17, 1992.
Over the past year, several high-profile cases have gone unsolved despite dozens of potential witnesses.
In September, a 15-year-old boy was shot and killed during the popular Haunted Hills Hayride north of Versailles. This case, too, remains unsolved. His family pleaded for anyone with information to come forward.
In April, multiple people began shooting at a huge underage party at an Airbnb on the north side of Pittsburgh. Two teenagers were killed. Police estimate that around 200 people were inside the rental at the time.
“We are still actively investigating this,” said Cmdr. Richard Ford spoke about the Airbnb case earlier this month. It’s a refrain often used by police officers when questioned about an ongoing case.
In this case, police did not say if they had any suspects in the case, noting only that it was an ongoing investigation.
“It’s a very complicated scene,” Ford said previously. “There is a lot of evidence to process. There are new things that have come out that we are not aware of and (we) need to investigate those. We try to make sure we’ve interviewed everyone we can interview, and in some cases we re-interview people.
So far in 2022, Pittsburgh detectives have solved about a third of the city’s 41 homicides. Investigators noted that they also cleared up six homicides that occurred in 2021.
The city will begin reviewing old unsolved cases next month using federal grants. Two former investigators will review the files. Officials did not say who those investigators will be.
The families, meanwhile, are waiting for the call that someone has been arrested.
“We need closure,” said Robert Washington, whose 27-year-old daughter, Ebony McCary, died Aug. 2. “There are a lot of parents in Pittsburgh, just like me.”
McCary, whom Washington called dynamic and ambitious, was found shot in the head around 2:30 a.m. in Homewood North and died several hours later.
Washington said his call for those with knowledge to come forward was not just for him, but for all loved ones awaiting justice.
“I believe there are people out there who also know something about all these other murders,” he said. “So for me, it’s not just about my daughter. It’s about all these other young men and women who are being murdered in the city.
Some cases remain shrouded in mystery because it is not known if they are really homicides.
Between 500,000 and 600,000 people go missing in the United States each year, and a large majority of them are found and cases solved within days.
Some, however, are not.
Robert Allison reportedly quit his job at Tri-River Fleeting in Bethel Park a few days before Christmas 1994, and he was never seen again. According to Project Charley, a volunteer-run information center for missing persons information, Allison told a colleague he was leaving the Ohio River tug where he worked and heading to a bar.
The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, known as NamUs, is a database of missing persons and unidentified dead. It lists 62 cases in Allegheny County dating back to 1959.
Even if and when the remains of a missing person are found, it can still be unclear whether a crime took place.
In July 2015, bones found along the Ohio River in Avalon a year earlier were identified as missing Tribune-Review employee Daniel Niehaus.
Niehaus, an inserter at the Trib Total Media print and distribution center in West Deer, went missing in May 2013. He called in sick three days in a row before the Memorial Day long weekend, returned one day, then got sick again. . He never showed up for his next scheduled shift. A search of his neighborhood in Penn Hills turned up nothing.
Former Penn Hills Police Chief Howard Burton told the tribe in 2018 that all leads had been exhausted.
“We found him, so he’s not a missing person. It’s always just a matter of how it happened,” Burton said at the time. “We don’t know what happened.”
Megan Guza is editor of Tribune-Review. You can contact Megan by email at [email protected] or via Twitter .
Comments are closed.