Unsolved Cases in Bucks County, PA
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County has long history as killers dumping ground
By BEN FINLEY
Bucks County Courier Times
17 May 2008
Last weeks murder involving one Philadelphia man allegedly shooting another on a Bensalem exit ramp wasnt the first time big-city killers did their dirty work here.
For years, Lower Bucks was a place where out-of-towners turned up dead.
Transvestites and underworld figures from Philadelphia and New York have ended up on the sides of highways and in parking lots. A farmer found the body of a kidnapped teenage girl in his fields.
In the 1970s and 1980s in particular, the number of non-residents found dead in Lower Bucks was more than a dozen. The countys quieter parts of I-95, Route 1 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike have attracted killers looking for a quiet place to dump and a quick getaway.
You cant dump a body on I-95 and the Betsy Ross Bridge. Someone will find it immediately, said former Bucks District Attorney Alan Rubenstein, whos now a county judge. Once you get past Woodhaven [Road], things become a little quieter at night
. The people who do these things usually dont think them through. The first isolated spot they find is usually where it occurs.
The murders can put strains on local police, requiring the cooperation of several jurisdictions, even states, which is the case with last weeks murder.
Yet the phenomenon of body dumping in Bucks has faded.
Development and population growth seem to be the main factors, officials said. The highways arent as quiet, the woods less thick.
Bucks County is becoming more urbanized, said Rubenstein, who prosecuted some of the murderers who dumped bodies here in the 1970s and 1980s. (If police establish that the killing occurred somewhere outside of Bucks, the non-Bucks jurisdiction investigates and prosecutes the crime.)
And most homicides in Philadelphia stay in Philadelphia. People are shot on the street. Theyre found where they are shot, he said. People are shot in drivebys and ambushed.
Marissa Levy, an environmental criminologist who studies the relationship between crime and the layout of a city, also attributed the decline in body dumping to development.
Levy, who teaches at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, said murderers usually leave bodies or kill people in places theyre familiar with. Most folks who live in Philadelphia or New York are acquainted with Bucks Countys major highways.
But, she said, as an area becomes more developed, theres less places to stash a body.
In 1979, after nine non-county residents were found dead here in six years, then Bucks DA Kenneth Biehn acknowledged the problem was one that aggravates suburban areas around the country.
When you have a situation where none of the players are from the area, it makes it well nigh on to impossible for local investigators to make any headway, Biehn said back then.
Yet despite the obvious challenges, Bucks law enforcement officials often working with other jurisdictions have solved some of those murders. That was the case with last Sundays murder in Bensalem, according to police.
Bensalem police last week charged Philadelphia resident Omar Shariff Cash with the execution-style killing of Philadelphia resident Edgar Rosas- Gutierrez on the exit ramp linking Route 1 to Street Road.
Cash allegedly carjacked Rosas- Gutierrez and his female friend in Philadelphias Juniata section. He then drove to Bucks to kill Rosas-Gutierrez and rape the woman there and later in New Jersey, police said. Cash was arrested in New York City.
Below are some of the murder cases involving non-county residents:
2004: Trenton resident Kenyatta Ward, 20, was strangled in New Jerseys capital city and dumped in woods in Morrisville. Two Trenton residents were convicted in her death.
1997: Li Jia Qiang, a 27-year-old Chinese immigrant living in New York City, was found murdered and stuffed in a trash can on I-95 in Lower Makefield. His hands had been mutilated by a sharp object. But police were able to get a fingerprint and identify him. The case is unsolved.
1986: Tina Severns was kidnapped in Philadelphia by Albert J. Altimari, who raped and murdered her before dumping her body while she was still alive on West Trenton Avenue near Route 13 in Falls. Altimari was sentenced to life in prison.
1986: Faustino Tina Arryo, 27, and Jonathan Tanya Streater were transvestite prostitutes working the streets of Philadelphia. They were found charred and mutilated after police responded to a report of a brush fire on the side of Trenton Road in Middletown. Two men in a car had picked them up in the city. Investigators guessed the men became angry after learning the two prostitutes were men. The case is unsolved.
1981: Anthony Todd was a Philadelphia cab driver who worked in Center City. The 25-year-old was found shot to death at the intersection of Third and Miller avenues in Bristol Township. The killer then drove Todds taxi to a deserted area on Grundy Lane off Newportville Road and deserted the vehicle. The case is unsolved.
1978: Charles Little Ceasar Sherman, a reputed underworld figure from Philadelphia, was found dead along I-95 in Middletown. He had been executed gangland style. The case is unsolved.
1975: Valerie Seibert, 16, was discovered lying in a field near Second Street Pike and Swamp Road in Wrightstown by a farmer. Seibert, who was an 11th-grader at George Washington High School in Philadelphia, was missing for two days from her home in on Chilton Road in Northeast Philadelphia. Police also said they believed that Seibert was shot twice on the farm. The case is unsolved.
Ben Finley can be reached at 215-949-4203 or
bfinley@phillyBurbs.com.
I grew up with Valerie Seibert. She suddenly disappeared during junior year of HS. How sad to find out what really happened this way.
