Mobsters may have helped, or killed, suspect

Suspect Donald Eugene Webb's alleged organized crime association may be why he hasn't been found since the murder of Saxonburg police chief Greg Adams in 1980.

While James Poydence was still a state trooper, he and other investigators visited a prison at Walpole, Mass., to ask a Mafia boss about Webb and where to find him.

"The mob boss was unhappy that we bothered him. Some wonder if he ordered Webb killed," Poydence said.

Yet, mobsters might have just as easily helped Webb.

When Webb was arrested in Virginia on a burglary charge in the mid-1970s, "the mob flew in a high powered attorney from Rhode Island to bail him out," Poydence said.

Webb also showed more than once he had nerve.

In the week before the Adams killing, Webb stayed at the former Friendship Hotel in Greensburg, police said.

One day during that stay, Webb locked his keys in his running rented Mercury Cougar. A state trooper helped him to get a key by taking him to a Mercury dealership along Route 30.

Officials there called the Shea-Rose Lincoln Mercury dealership in Taunton, Mass., for the key number.

The ex-con thanked the trooper, and sometime before the Adams homicide delivered an unsolicited bottle of liquor to the trooper's office at the Greensburg barracks, people close to the case said.

A prison-hardened man involved in crime with that type of courage could still be alive, said Poydence, now a private investigator based in Kiski Township.

Former FBI agent Peter D. McCann also thinks Webb might be alive.

"It would be great to find him before he dies," said McCann, who now is a private investigator based in New Castle.

Trooper Chris Birckbichler is among those still looking for Webb.

He clearly remembers the day Adams was killed.

Birckbichler was 14 and riding in the car driven by his father, Dale, a state trooper who knew Adams.

"We saw a police car at Route 356 and he stopped to find out what was going on," he said. "I saw the trooper explaining what had happened and my dad came back. We went home and he locked the house, changed into his uniform and went to work."

Twenty-five years later, the younger Birckbichler is the case's lead investigator.