GUILTY PA - Barbara Rowan, 14, raped & murdered, Trevose, 3 Aug 1984

The Daily Intelligencer
Thursday, Dec 19th 1985
Doylestown PA

........After Greenwald decided to plead guilty, prosecutors tried unsuccessfully to obtain information from him concerning Tracy's disappearance, Jennings said.
" We were hoping we could get answers to a lot of questions," Jennings said "He admitted to nothing."
Jennings said Greenwald did not disclose a motive for killing Byrd. At the time of her disappearance, friends said she had seperated from him and grown fearful of him.
Two years before the murder, Greenwald pleaded guilty in Bucks County Court to kidnapping and assaulting Byrd in an incident that began in a Middletown apartment where she was staying with another man.
Greenwald stabbed the man with a knife, abducted Byrd and led police on a high-speed car chase into Trenton, where he was captured, according to police and court records.
Byrd, however, spoke in defense of Greenwald at his sentencing in that case, influencing Presideng Judge Isaac S. garb to sentence him to five years probation, said Robert Goldman, chief deputy district attorney, who handled the case.
"She spoke up to mitigate the facts" Goldman said "She made excuses for his actions. We didn't agree to probation. I'm sure the judge's sentencing was based in part on what Jean Byrd said about Greenwald."
Goldman said he saw the Byrd tragedy as a classic example of "battered woman syndrome."
 
Kind of off topic, with the Byrd case and all, (unless they are connected). Does anyone else think that maybe Tracy was pregnant and maybe the father might have been Paul Greenwald and that was the motive for killing Jean Byrd?? I also think it was odd that he committed suicide (if that is what happened) when facing a manslaughter charge, which was like nothing back then. Maybe his conscience got to him??
 
The Daily Intelligencer
Sunday Aug. 19th 1984
Doylestown PA

...The victim was suffocated, according to Dr. Thomas J. Rosko County Coroner.
...He said an effort is being made to locate dental records that could confirm the identification.
Rosko also said the victim suffered no broken bones, no stab wounds nor gunshot wounds. He listed the death as resulting from asphyxiation by suffocation.......
When Miss Rowan disappeared she was reportedly wearing a blue top, blue shorts and blue flip-flops. She was also carrying a softball and a baseball glove and a portable AM-FM cassette radio.
...The body had been covered with branches,indicating the murderer intended the body not be found.
...Zajac said Barbara's mother, Patricia, 31, who is a patient at Frankford Hospital's Torresdale Division where she had undergone gallbladder surgery, was informed by her husband, Robert T. Rowan, 41, of the finding of the girl's body.
It was Rowan who first drew public attention to his daughter's disappearance.
Rowan insisted his daughter had headed up Bristol Road to the Mall Motel about 3 p.m. to play with a girlfriend who lives there. He said he and his wife became concerned when she failed to return home at 5 p.m. He notified police at about 7:30 p.m.
Zajac discounted Rowan's time estimates, saying that the police were not notified until 9:28 p.m. He said investigators subsequently learned that Miss Rowan did not head for the motel but had been playing baseball in the trailer park.
 
In and around the time Barbara disappeared , in this area, the Warlock Motorcycle Gang seemed to be creating a lot of havoc. I at first discounted why in articles I read, police seemed to keep connecting them to suspicion on some of the disappearances of these young girls from the Philadelphia and Delaware County area. I read an article last night that a Robert " Mudman" Simon, who was a cop killer BTW and was beaten to death while sitting on Death Row by another inmate, was convicted of the 1977 death of a young lady named Beth Smith. Miss Smith's body was recovered from a water filled pit in Luzerne County PA. She had been shot once in the forehead. Mudman was convicted of her death because a fellow gang member made a deal with authorities and told of how Beth went to a party with Mudman and refused to share her favors with the whole gang so he shot her in the head with a revolver. Other people at the party also testified to this. It makes me wonder about these other four murders in that area:
Debra Jean Delozier 1975, found in the Tinicum Marsh, shot in the forehead
Denise Seaman 1975, found in the Tinicum Marsh, shot in the forehead
Mary Ann Lees 1975, found in the Schuylkill River, shot in the forehead
Layne Dorothy Spicer 1975, found in the Schuylkill river, shot in the forehead

Also Wendy Eaton, who is still listed as missing from this area, was a friend of Denise Seaman. I wonder how many of these 70's missing girls tie into Mudman.
 
Hollow said:
... Beth went to a party with Mudman and refused to share her favors with the whole gang so he shot her in the head with a revolver. Other people at the party also testified to this. It makes me wonder about these other four murders in that area:
Debra Jean Delozier 1975, found in the Tinicum Marsh, shot in the forehead
Denise Seaman 1975, found in the Tinicum Marsh, shot in the forehead
Mary Ann Lees 1975, found in the Schuylkill River, shot in the forehead
Layne Dorothy Spicer 1975, found in the Schuylkill river, shot in the forehead

Also Wendy Eaton, who is still listed as missing from this area, was a friend of Denise Seaman. I wonder how many of these 70's missing girls tie into Mudman.
These murders all sound very similar. It would be surprising if LE did not connect them back in 1975. What were the balistics on the weapon used? Was it the same caliber? Were any bullets or casings recovered?
 
I know the four girls found in the marsh and the schuylkill river were all shot with a 22 caliber revolver. In the story I found about Beth Smith being shot, Mudman's friend simply stated that he raised a revolver and shot her in the head. I don't know anything else.
 
Other unsolved PA murders:

Mary Grace Triolo 15
A ninth grader in the Fairless School district, she was found strangled in Bristol PA on February 20 1965.

Karen Monhollen 14
Body found in Lima quarry in Middletown Township. No cause of death.

Susan Rush 21
Washington PA found in the trunk of her car in Washington PA, strangled. She was found on Feb 24th 1976.

Brenda Lee Ritter 18
Left her boyfriends house in Washington PA, her car was found the next day in South Strabane and her body was found the same day in North Strabane strangled, on May 18 1977.

Joan Rasperger 15
The Slickville, West Moreland County girl was found in a wooded area. No cause of death. Nov 1977.
 
More unsolved PA murders:

Delores Dellapenna 17
From Philadelphia PA, Wildwood
Disappeared July 11th 1972 while walking to a trolley stop. Torso found July 22nd in Jackson Township N.J and legs found on July 29th in Manchester N.Jin wooded area.

Valerie Seibert 16
From Philadelphia PA
Found on March 4th 1975 on a Wrightstown farm shot and killed.

Patty Bartlett 17
From Lower Makefield
Stabbed to death on January 13th 1975 at Oxford Valley Mall.

Shaun Ritterson 20
worked at Bristol Simon and Schuster book warehouse
Found nude, stabbed and disemboweled on June 12 1978 on a remote Buckingham mountain.

Earseline Jones 20
worked also at Bristol Simon and Schuster book warehouse
Found mutilated and stabbed on the Penn Warner Club grounds in Falls Township PA on August 27 1978
 
Just thought that I would bump this case up. There was some good discussion about possible serial killers in PA. Anything new?
 
This sounds like more of the work of David Robert Kennedy:

The Post Standard
September 26, 1967

TEENAGE GIRL FOUND SLAIN IN ERIE BOULEVARD E. LOT

Rose Spina missing two days.

A 17-year-old girl missing from her home since Saturday was found brutally slain at about 5 p.m. yesterday beside a parking area near an old railroad bed at Erie Blvd., E. and Walnut avenue.

...said the girl was nude from the waist down and her slip had been twisted around her neck....
 
I think there were at least three serial killers operating in this area in the late 60s, early/mis 70s and possibly even longer. I'm not kidding when I say that if I lived in this area, I would organize a search effort to search the woods, strip mines, and vacant lot/abandoned areas and find all of those girls that have still not been recovered. I know they are there, just not found. I think, and this is just my opinion, that Kennedy is the chief of most of these killings. I think he was only charged with a couple, but he had a very distinct signiture, which is fully recognizable.
 
marylandmissing said:
Richard, they long have suspected a serial killer was operating in that area around this time...When I came to the Doe Network, I noticed a huge amount of brunettes missing in PA while searching for a match for the Frederick Jane doe. I sent a list to the state police here and was told investigators long since believe a serial killer was operating in the area. There was a truck driver interviewed with the Frederick Jane Doe case and apparently he operated in this area.

MD
http://www.doenetwork.us/cases/237ufmd.html 1991 Jane Doe, Frederick
Tracy Hoffmaster, found 1996 not far rom this site http://www.cityoffrederick.com/departments/Police/Homicides.htm
PA cases:

1987 http://www.doenetwork.us/cases/51dfpa.html
1988 Jane Doe http://www.doenetwork.us/cases/461ufpa.html
1989 http://www.doenetwork.us/cases/899dfpa.html
1989 http://www.doenetwork.us/cases/601dfpa.html (may be domestic)
1989 http://www.doenetwork.us/cases/19dfpa.html
1990 Jane Doe http://www.doenetwork.us/cases/246ufpa.html
1991 http://www.doenetwork.us/cases/260dfpa.html
1991 http://www.doenetwork.us/cases/166dfpa.html
1992 http://www.doenetwork.us/cases/602dfpa.html
1992 Jane Doe http://www.doenetwork.us/cases/179ufpa.html
1993 http://www.doenetwork.us/cases/852dfpa.html
1993 http://www.doenetwork.us/cases/769dfpa.html
1995 http://www.doenetwork.us/cases/1285dfpa.html
About Goble, he took their shoes ??? What a weirdo !!! I'm going to work on the identity of Frederick Jane Doe, this is interesting.
 
Paper: Morning Call, The (Allentown, PA)
Title: MUDMAN'S LIFE WAS NOT PRECIOUS
Date: September 10, 1999

The late Philip Wylie, America's shamefully underappreciated literary titan, came up with the solution to war in a single succinct paragraph.

Instead of sending innocent young men to slaughter each other, he wrote, national leaders should be required to settle disputes (and satiate their lust for combat) by personally facing off, in an arena, armed with socks full of dung.If you think about it, Wylie's approach would work as well as anything else mankind has devised, but I suspect that greedy defense contractors successfully lobbied against it.

I read Wylie as a youth and I'm not sure if his iconoclasm helped make me the way I am, or if I was drawn to him because I was already predisposed along those lines. Either way, his harsh logic came to mind when I saw the story about the passing of Robert "Mudman" Simon.

Simon and another inmate faced off in the arena of Trenton State Prison, and Simon was beaten to death. My first reaction was that the victorious inmate should be given a medal.

Simon was in prison for killing a New Jersey police officer 11 weeks after Pennsylvania gave him a parole in the case of a murder in Jim Thorpe. (He had killed Beth Dusenberg, 19, because she declined his invitation to be the guest of honor at a gang rape by the Warlocks motorcycle gang.)

The cop he killed was Hispanic. While in prison, Simon vowed to kill one minority inmate per day. He did manage to kill one, but was acquitted. So there was some poetic justice in the fact that the man who beat Simon to death, Ambrose Harris, is black.


Before we pin a medal on Harris, however, let's consider his case. He abducted a lovely young Bucks County artist in a carjacking, locked her in the trunk of her car for several hours, sodomized her and then killed her.

If you say the life of Kristin Huggins was precious and should have been protected at all costs, you'll get no argument from me. I can't agree, however, that all life is precious.

I never met Simon or Harris, but I have met hundreds of prison inmates, including Pennsylvania's two most notorious -- Stanley Hoss, who lived way too long, and Danny Delker, who is from Catasauqua.

Hoss, Delker and Simon were remarkably similar -- savage racists who enjoyed inflicting pain.

Are such lives precious? Not to me, they aren't. In fact, the prolonged preservation of such lives too often results in the destruction of decent people. You may recall the news stories about Hoss and Delker jumping a prison guard and bludgeoning him to death because he was black.

And the mayhem caused by such people is not confined to prisons.

Simon's 1995 state parole was intensely controversial, in hindsight, but understandable.

About 80 percent of American prison inmates are confined because of drug-related crimes. Amid today's drug hysteria, there is intense political pressure to jail even more. That means the system must turn loose killers like Simon to make room for some pathetic junkie who poses a threat to no one but himself.
Meanwhile, do long prison terms serve as a deterrent? Getting caught may be a tangible fear in a criminal mind, but I bet the difference between short and long prison terms is nothing but an abstraction.

If long prison terms do no good, what shall we do with those for whom release is not tolerable -- the Mudman Simons of the world?

In some minds, the obvious answer to that question is too cruel for words. But for any normal human being, death would be less cruel than many long years in prison.

Therefore, taking a cue from Philip Wylie, I offer this paragraph:

Limit maximum prison terms to three years. If the crime is too vicious for a three-year term, impose the death penalty, once the defendant's constitutional rights have been carefully, but swiftly, accommodated.

In the long run, that'd be more humane for all concerned, except the greedy bureaucracies that profit from America having the world's biggest prison population, per capita.
 
I didn't find a thread dedicated to Tracy Byrd, but since she was discussed here, I opted to post the following link. It's a video interview with Det Chris McMullin of Bensalem PD (PA) with the latest developements about Tracy's disappearance and the DNA comparison being done with 461ufpa.

Link to video:
http://www.myfoxphilly.com/myfox/pages/ContentDetail?contentId=3646429

Link to both cases on Doe Network:
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/9dfpa.html
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/461ufpa.html
 
Hi
I have dial up so I can not see this video.Can you please tell me what detective mullins said.Are there any news paper articles on what he said.I had looked into this Jane Doe possibly being my sister awhile back.I thought I heard they already checked DNA with Tracy Bird and this Jane Doe and it didn't match.

suzanne
 
...when there is a fresh new snowfall that is still clinging to the branches.

I never met her ...but we had so much in common.

An amature photographer, she went to the mall that day to get film for her 35mm for what would probably be her first snow shots.

Although I had considered taking similar photos that day, I was also out of film, and decided not to chance driving on the icy roads ...

To this day, I have not been able to take those snow shots because I still think of her, and how she fought to live that day.

Patty's murder remain's unsolved, but I believe she was killed by the same man who was eventually convicted of stabbing a woman to death in a motel room on route 13 in Bristol Township some years later.

This man had also been put on juvenile probation half a dozen times for sexual assaults as a young teenager, but you dare not mention the crimes one committed as a juvenile when he is finally caught literallly red-handed, and is finally old enough to prosecute.

Although I fear the worst...I pray he is still in prison.

Rest in Peace , Patty... Someday, I will take those photos FOR you.



More unsolved PA murders:

Patty Bartlett 17
From Lower Makefield
Stabbed to death on January 13th 1975 at Oxford Valley Mall.
 
...due to recent interest on another thread.
 

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