PA PA - French Creek State Park, Union Twp, BlkFem 21-28, 349UFPA, bag w/ "FA", "O" & "ATER", Jul'88

Any one have any idea what grocery store could have those letters???


Pieces of a white, plastic bag resembling a grocery bag were found in the grave with the remains. The bag had red lettering. The letters are believed to be "FA", "O" and "ATER".
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/349ufpa.html



JBEAN ETA: ADDING SOME UPDATED LINKS FOR THIS COLD CASE >>COURTESY OF MAYFAIRLIGHT

Updated links for "Help on a cold case puzzle/grocery bag "

Doenetwork:
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/349ufpa.html

Page at Pennsylvania missing, also pics of bag
http://www.pennsylvaniamissing.com/349ufpa.html

Direct links to bag pictures
(maybe should be uploaded to here so everyone can view them easily?)

http://www.pennsylvaniamissing.com/images/600_349ufpa_-_Bag_1.jpg

http://www.pennsylvaniamissing.com/images/600_349ufpa_Bag_2.jpg

still looking but there is an ATER Texas
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/AA/hra60.html

Pictures of the grocery bag can be found here:

http://www.pennsylvaniamissing.com/images/600_349ufpa_-_Bag_1.jpg

http://www.pennsylvaniamissing.com/images/600_349ufpa_Bag_2.jpg

Scroll down to the bottom of the page, larger pictures of the bag can be viewed by clicking on the pictures.

Couldn't resist guessing what these letters might mean. I thought maybe the "ater" could have been " catering", "eatery" or "cafeteria". Who knows. There was a chain of grocery stores in Ohio in the 80's named Fazios.

Hollow said:

Couldn't resist guessing what these letters might mean. I thought maybe the "ater" could have been " catering", "eatery" or "cafeteria". Who knows. There was a chain of grocery stores in Ohio in the 80's named Fazios.

Click to expand...

Do you know if they did any catering or had any type of eating places?

Paradise said:

Do you know if they did any catering or had any type of eating places?

Click to expand...

I cannot remember, but that bag sure as heck looks like it says Fazios on it to me, I don't know if they had any in PA though.

Hollow said:

Couldn't resist guessing what these letters might mean. I thought maybe the "ater" could have been " catering", "eatery" or "cafeteria". Who knows. There was a chain of grocery stores in Ohio in the 80's named Fazios.

Click to expand...

I thought there was a grocery by a name that started with F, but for the life of me I couldn't remember what it was!

Quick web check shows the following:
Welcome to Fazio's Italian Restaurant, LaStalla Pizzeria, and The Sawtooth Tavern, all located at 38 Woodbridge Road in York, Maine
http://www.fazios.com/

Fazios Pizza & Subs, 1414 58th St S, Gulfport, FL
http://local.yahoo.com/details?id=14480121

Fazios Specialty Auto Parts - Fazios Specialty Auto Performance Parts - Fazios Specialty Auto Mobile Electronics - ...
http://www.streetperformance.com/parts/fazios_specialty_auto.html

Hollow said:

I cannot remember, but that bag sure as heck looks like it says Fazios on it to me, I don't know if they had any in PA though.

Click to expand...

Well, this wouldn't be the first time a girl from Ohio was found in PA so just because there was a chain in OH I wouldn't discount the fact that it could've traveled from there to here.

I played with gamma corrections, contrast and colors a bit and then put them in an album called bags and made it a public album so feel free to look. You might want to click a download button and then open the image to see it in its full size. I won't leave them up forever so if you want a copy just download it.
http://photos.yahoo.com/docwho3

It sort of reminds me of a faygo ad and I believe they had about 40 flavors then and I notice what looks like that number. I emailed a sodapop museum to ask about it just on the off chance that it might turn into something.

Also I found the following jumble of bag info, everything from history of plastic grocery bags to other deaths related to grocery bags:

Faygo soda history
In 1987 it was bought by National Beverage Corp. of Ft. Lauderdale, FL.
They added eight flavors after that for a totals of 49 flavors but in 1987 or 1988
they must have had only about 40 flavors.
http://www.sodamuseum.bigstep.com/generic.html?pid=30
history of plastic bags
http://www.plasticbag.com/environmental/history.html
***************************
another grocery bag killing 1993
http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/moe/index.php?ntid=57605&ntpid=2

A case is reported in which a lethal level of temazepam and asphyxia by a plastic bag were determined to be the cause of death. The decedent was a 43 year old female found in the cargo area of her sport utility vehicle parked at a nearby grocery store. Significant findings included a plastic grocery bag over her head, with the handles loosely tied around her head; acute, passive congestion of the liver, kidneys, and lungs; multiple notes detailing her intent to commit suicide were found in the vehicle; and an elevated temazepam concentration was detected in postmortem blood. The decedent had a history of depression and had attempted suicide on four previous occasions using her medications. Temazepam was identified and quantitated in the following tissues: heart blood – 7.8 mg/L, urine – 4.2 mg/L, muscle – 5.9 mg/Kg, liver - 15.5 mg/Kg, kidney – 11.3 mg/Kg, and brain – 7.5 mg/Kg. Methylphenidate was also detected in the urine (0.14 mg/L) and at trace levels in the heart blood and all submitted tissue specimens.
http://www.sat-tox.org/sanantonio.html

i was looking ast the bag and couldnt find anyting i could think of i have family in pa my aunt uncle my cousins and grandparents moved to pa about 12 years ago and my other aunt and uncle and cousins moved their 2 years ago im very familar with the names of grocery stores and other stores and such since i visit alot and i couldnt come up with anything

Just throwing this out here, but what about "Factory Outlet", in our area we have a lot of those malls, may not mean a lot, but that is the first thing that came to mind when I saw the bag.

docwho3 said:

I played with gamma corrections, contrast and colors a bit and then put them in an album called bags and made it a public album so feel free to look. You might want to click a download button and then open the image to see it in its full size. I won't leave them up forever so if you want a copy just download it.
http://photos.yahoo.com/docwho3

It sort of reminds me of a faygo ad and I believe they had about 40 flavors then and I notice what looks like that number. I emailed a sodapop museum to ask about it just on the off chance that it might turn into something.

Also I found the following jumble of bag info, everything from history of plastic grocery bags to other deaths related to grocery bags:

Faygo soda history
In 1987 it was bought by National Beverage Corp. of Ft. Lauderdale, FL.
They added eight flavors after that for a totals of 49 flavors but in 1987 or 1988 they must have had only about 40 flavors....

Click to expand...

When I looked at the picture this morning, I too thought of the Faygo Soda Pop company, and it looked to me like a two digit number below. Looking at your enhancements, I believe that it is more likely that the number is 49 rather than 40, because the bottom of the circle seems to end about the bottom of the horizizontal bar of the "4".

These days, it seems that all soda pop companies are owned by large corporations and have a nationwide distribution - or at least they may be in various, widely separated states across the country. Back in the 1950's and up to the mid 1970's, I recall a much more "local" or small regional distribution of Soda Pop and Beer brands. I believe that Faygo was a local pop of Michigan and Ohio and possibly of another adjacent state or two. Bottle Collectors today would be very knowledgable of the specific distribution was.

I grew up as a small child in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan and I very distinctly remember the Faygo soda pop and their TV commercials. One of them was a cartoon of the "Faygo Kid" who, after being shot full of holes, slapped up Black Bart and put both Bart and the black horse-he-rode-in-on in the jail, saving the girl passenger, and allowing the stage coach to proceed on its way.

Another commercial was one done by the radio and movie actor who played "The Great Guildersleeve". In that commercial, he played a small store owner who would sell a Faygo red pop to a kid and then ask the audience, "When was the last time you had a good slug of Red Pop?"

All that aside, I do not recall ever seeing Faygo advertising on plastic grocery bags. In fact, I think all grocery bags were pretty much the plain brown paper variety at least into the 1970's. It is more likely that such bags would have been provided to package stores by the National Distributer in an effort to advertize their soda pop in places where it was being newly introduced.

Knowing the region where the bag came from might give some idea of where the victim or the perpetrator had been. Something more specific which the bag might provide would be fingerprints. I wonder if police were able to find any on the bag after such a long time.

Maybe this is a liquor store bag, since Title 40 is the Pennsylvania liquor control statutes.

For my two cents...The lower letters loook more like "..ATED", not "..ATER", the illusion of the "R" is created by the shading along the crease through the middle of the "D".A popular grocery chain in WV (and maybe elsewhere) was "Fas Chek". I believe they are still in business.

I agree with Richard that numbers appear to be "49".

This is what I had been referring to:
http://al_beagan.tripod.com/APRIL4/3835.htm

I also just realized that this could say Theater...I dunno just throwing stuff out there. This bag was found in 1988 so I'm assuming it's from sometime in the 80's. Although the pictures are bad, I think LE looked closely at the bag and I don't think they would've released what they thought the letters were unless they were sure.

Here's some info on Faygo Sodas...in the 1980's they marketed a line of specially treated water, launching a line of flavored sparkling waters.

http://www.detroitjuggalos.com/faygo.html

Paradise said:

I also just realized that this could say Theater...I dunno just throwing stuff out there. This bag was found in 1988 so I'm assuming it's from sometime in the 80's. Although the pictures are bad, I think LE looked closely at the bag and I don't think they would've released what they thought the letters were unless they were sure.

Click to expand...

We could hope that to be true, but "LE" are just guys and gals like us, who make the best guesses they can sometimes and make mistakes. (Let me tell ya a story about the death of young lady named Sharon sometime...)

By looking at the spacing between the known letters, could you determine how many letters or spaces are missing in between?
For instance is it FA_ _ O or FA _ _ _ O

shadowangel said:

We could hope that to be true, but "LE" are just guys and gals like us, who make the best guesses they can sometimes and make mistakes. (Let me tell ya a story about the death of young lady named Sharon sometime...)

Click to expand...

Yes, that is most definitely true. :crazy:

shadowangel echoed my thoughts earlier. It looks an awful lot like a Fas Chek bag. They used a check mark in between Fas and Chek if I'm not mistaken. I've been looking for some info about them but with not much luck.

I wonder if they celebrated an anniversary sometime in the mid-80's (like a 40 or 49th) and had the bags made up for the occasion?

I can't come up with a clue on the atep ater ateb or whatever that is.