4 deaths in 6 months left police stumped
Debra Capiola was one of four young women killed in Washington County within six months in 1976-77, and three of the slayings were eerily similar.
David Robert Kennedy, 45, of Cecil Township, was ordered Thursday to stand trial in the Capiola case. He was considered a suspect in one of the others early on but never arrested, police said.
Several suspects were never ruled out, including serial killer Ted Bundy, who was executed in Florida.
Yesterday, investigators refused to say if Kennedy is still considered a suspect in any of the other slayings.
Capiola and the other women were slain between November 1976 and May 1977. Three cases, including Capiola's, involved strangulation and sexual assault.
Capiola's partially clad body was found 100 yards off a road in an old strip mining area in Robinson Township, Washington County, 2 &*#189; miles from the school bus stop where she was last seen alive on March 17, 1977.
Authorities said Capiola, 17, of Findlay Township, was strangled with her own bluejeans. Her mother found her books and nursing uniform 75 feet from the bus stop.
Kennedy was an early suspect in the slaying, but he was not arrested until last month after DNA testing provided solid physical evidence, investigators said.
The first of the four victims was Susan Rush, 21, of Duncan Avenue, Washington, whose body was found Thanksgiving Day 1976 by her brother in the trunk of her mother's car along North Avenue about a quarter-mile from where she worked in the Washington Mall.
She suffered a fractured larynx resulting from strangulation. Her clothes were inside out on her body. Police said they believed a shoestring or piece of leather was used to strangle her.
Rush had worked at a Murphy's Mart store until 5 p.m. the day before Thanksgiving. The 1974 graduate of Washington High School and the Pennsylvania Community Beauty Academy wanted to become a beautician, according to newspaper reports at the time.
Another victim was Mary Irene Gency, 16, of Seventh Street in North Charleroi, whose nude body was found beside a dirt road in Fallowfield Township near the Charleroi Sportsmen's Club. The cause of her death differed from the others. She died of skull fractures inflicted by a heavy object, possibly a hammer or tire iron, former Washington County Coroner Farrell Jackson has said. He said she had been raped.
The last victim was Brenda Ritter, 18, of North Strabane Township, whose nude body was found in May 1976 on a grassy hill in a rural area of South Strabane Township about five miles from Washington. She had left her boyfriend's house in Meadow Lands about 10 p.m. to drive to her home during a thunderstorm.
The killer strangled her by tying her panties around her neck and using a stick to twist them, Jackson said at the time. Her body was a mile from her car, which was abandoned on Rankin Road.
Ritter, a 1976 graduate of Canon-McMillan High School, worked for a construction company in Washington.
South Strabane Township police Chief Donald Zofchak, who investigated the homicide, said he believed Ritter was abducted by someone she trusted.
Zofchak said Kennedy was looked at as a possible suspect in the Ritter case, but there was no solid evidence to connect him to the slaying. Zofchak said several suspects were never ruled out, including Bundy because of the township's proximity to interstates 70 and 79.
Authorities say Bundy stalked and killed young women between 1974 and '78 from Washington state to Florida.
'Someone got in her car,' Zofchak said. 'The assault didn't take place in the car - it occurred in the field.
'That was one of the first serious things we had to deal with in this town.'
Hazel Ritter of Eighty Four, mother of victim Brenda Ritter, said the police departments did not cooperate with each other 23 years ago as they do now.
'I do believe the three (Capiola, Ritter and Rush) murders were connected,' she said. 'I'm thinking it was three guys who killed three girls and they were working to together.' Ritter would not elaborate on her theory.
'I hope they do catch them. It's been a long time. We'll just have to wait and see.'
Washington County Sheriff Larry Maggi, who retired from the state police cold-case squad in January 1997, recalled those six months in Washington County as especially difficult for police.
'I remember at the time it was a hard time because these young girls were being murdered and it appeared they were committed the same way,' Maggi said yesterday.
'There was a push at the time they thought it was someone dressed up as a police officer,' Maggi said.
Investigators checked the schedules of police officers, he recalled.
Anthony Popeck, Washington County's chief detective working the homicide cases for the district attorney's office, offered no details yesterday on the investigation into the remaining homicides.
'They're being looked into,' he said.
Trooper Bev Ashton of the state police cold-case squad in Washington did not return calls for comment.
Trooper Diana Grady, state police spokeswoman, said earlier this week that the news media will be informed when any breaks are made in the cases. Grady said that during safety seminars she conducts for women in Washington County, longtime residents still comment about how fearful they were during that time.
Paul Nutcher can be reached at pnutcher@tribweb.com or at (412) 306-4535.
