Stephen Charles Lepore – The Charley Project
Missing Since 08/17/2012
Missing From Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania
Classification Endangered Missing
Sex Male
Race White
Age 55 years old
Height and Weight 5'7, 210 - 230 pounds
Clothing/Jewelry Description An olive green t-shirt, off-gray knee-length Congo cargo shorts and sneakers.
Medical Conditions Lepore suffers from bipolar disorder and may become paranoid as a result of his condition. He left his medication behind.
Distinguishing Characteristics Caucasian male. Graying brown hair, brown eyes. Lepore had a mustache at the time of his disappearance. He has a tattoo of a cross on his calf and a tattoo of the words "Stevie Boy" on his left bicep. He has had extensive dental work.
Details of Disappearance
Lepore was last seen leaving his residence on Belvedere Road in Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania at 8:30 a.m. on August 17, 2012. He said he was going to run some errands and would be back later. He never returned and has never been heard from again.
On September 6, his silver and gray 2007 Chevrolet Express van with the Pennsylvania license plate number YZN5888 was found on Brown Street, a dead-end street in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. He rarely visited that area. A photo of the van is posted with this case summary. Lepore's keys, wallet and a pile of paperwork he kept in the van and had been meaning to take care of were missing.
Lepore graduated from an automotive technical school. Although he was unemployed due to a prior back injury, he enjoyed fixing cars and doing favors for his neighbors. He had lived with a female friend in the Pocono Farms East area for eleven years. They shared their expenses, and she made sure he took his medication. He has a criminal history and served time for theft and weapons offenses.
A grand jury investigated Lepore's disappearance in 2013. Police were looking for a man known as "Corey Banks"; Lepore was seen with him prior to going missing. In 2015, Michael Anthony Cimato was charged with perjury and false swearing to authorities in connection with his testimony.
He had claimed he'd known Banks for over a decade but denied any family relationship with him. He said Banks came to Pennsylvania in the spring on 2012 to borrow money, and Cimato had last seen him when he dropped Banks off at a hotel in Dickson City, Pennsylvania.
Police later identified Banks as Kip Morgan, who was wanted in New York for parole violation in an attempted murder case, and in Illinois for armed robbery. Morgan's son is Cimato's nephew, meaning Cimato had lied when he said he had no family relationship with Morgan.
Morgan was arrested in Brooklyn, New York in May 2015. Authorities haven't identified either Cimato or Morgan as suspects in Lepore's disappearance, and the charges are only connected to Cimato's statements, not to the disappearance itself.
Since Lepore's disappearance, there hasn't been any activity on his cellular phone. He was close to his mother and it's uncharacteristic of him to leave without warning, and authorities believe foul play may have been involved in his case. His disappearance remains unsolved.
