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http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/new.../31/35-years-later-girls-murder-unsolved.html
35 years later, girl's murder unsolved
TEXT SIZE
By: BEN FINLEY
Bucks County Courier Times
Pennsbury High School senior Patty Bartlett was stabbed to death outside the Oxford Valley Mall.
One theory was that a serial killer did it.
So, in the late 1990s, then-Middletown detective Daniel Baranoski traveled to a maximum-security penitentiary in Maryland. He sat down with Hadden Clark, a man estimated to have killed up to 13 people, many of them women, on the East Coast.
Baranoski asked Clark if he had anything to do with the fatal stabbing of a Pennsbury High School senior, Patty Bartlett, outside the Oxford Valley Mall in 1975.
Clark said he had to think about it. He stared at the prison walls as he probed his memory.
A good chunk of Clark's teen years were spent in Morrisville and Yardley. He graduated from Pennsbury in 1972. Although all his killings are believed to have occurred outside this area, it wouldn't be out of character, Baranoski thought.
But Clark's answer was "no."
Patty's murder - which occurred 35 years ago this month - remains unsolved.
Baranoski's interview with Clark is emblematic of the efforts made to try to solve the fatal stabbing.
All the rational explanations for her murder - attempted robbery, attempted sexual assault, a quarrel outside the mall with someone she knew - have gone unproven. The irrational ones, such as serial killer, haven't stuck, either.
Plenty of rumors have surrounded the killing. Baranoski conducted another jailhouse interview. Polygraph tests were administered. Potential witnesses at the mall were hypnotized. But no charges followed.
Another former Middletown detective who worked the case called it the failure of his career.
A free spirit
Patty was the second of four children. Her father, Neal, was a steelworker. Her mother, Clara, was a homemaker. The family, which includes brothers Jeff and Glenn and sister Jeanette, lived on Big Oak Road in Lower Makefield.
Patty's smile is still seared into the memories of her classmates.
"I thought she was the most beautiful girl in the school," recalled Michael Fevang, a classmate of Patty's who now lives in Maryland.
"But it wasn't just on the surface," he continued. "She had this free spirit that stood out from everyone else. And I don't mean that in the 1970s way. I mean it like she had no ego."
Patty had a passion for photography. Before she died, she was working on a series of portraits of her younger sister, who was 5, sitting on tree stumps and playing with her cat.
"When she did portraits, it wasn't the standard, looking at your face. It was over her shoulder or over your shoulder," said another classmate, Daniel Hornick, of Levittown. "It was very artistic."
Patty's love of photography took her to the mall on the evening of Jan. 13, a Monday. Snow was in the forecast, inspiring her to take photos.
Patty needed to buy photo paper and toner at the mall. That evening, she parked the family's light green Olds-mobile Cutlass near the mall entrance east of Gimbels, which is now Sears. A regular at The Camera Shop, she chatted with employees at the counter.
It was dark - about 5:30 p.m. - when Patty returned to the Oldsmobile. Snow and sleet shrouded the parking lot.
The 17-year-old was stabbed four times - twice in the chest and twice in the groin area. The knife was believed to be sharp, three quarters of an inch thick and 6 inches or 7 inches long.
Patty staggered 100 feet from the car to Gimbels, collapsing inside. Her hands clutched her umbrella and purse. Her wallet was still inside her purse, untouched.
In the ambulance, paramedics asked Patty for her name, address and religion, which she gave. No one asked for details about the stabbing.
"You can't fault the rescue squad," said Anthony Maniscola, a former Middletown detective and the lead investigator on the case in 1975. "They were trying to keep her conscious and alive."
Patty lived for another 50 minutes. She died at Middletown's St. Mary Medical Center. One of the stab wounds punctured her lung and heart. The cause of her death was internal bleeding.
Initially, there was some confusion about the stabbing victim's identity, Patty's older brother, Jeff recalled.
That evening, Jeff, who was 19, was at his girlfriend's house watching television. His girlfriend's father got a call from police. They told him his daughter had been stabbed to death, Jeff Bartlett said.
But Jeff's girlfriend's father told the officer: "That can't be. I'm staring at her right now."
It turned out Patty had Jeff's girlfriend's ID. The drinking age back then was 18.
When Maniscola, the Middletown detective, arrived at the mall, he found blood on the exterior doors of Gimbels and on the floor inside. He told a janitor to stop mopping it up.
The detective followed a trail of blood to the Oldsmobile. A bag of photography supplies was getting wet on the pavement. Patty's blood was washing away in the sleet.
Later on, Maniscola went to the hospital. He was there when Patty's father arrived. She was already dead.
Neal Bartlett cradled Patty in his arms, telling her everything was going to be OK.
No explanation
Twelve detectives from Middletown and the county worked the case. They set up a trailer outside the mall.
Advertisement
Detectives started interviewing everyone Patty knew, including her boyfriend and folks she worked with at Cocos, a restaurant on Lincoln Highway.
The mall itself was its own kind of lead. Relatively new and situated off Route 1, the mall enticed criminals from Philadelphia and Trenton. In the months prior to the murder, Maniscola said he arrested plenty of thieves, muggers and purse-snatchers who lived outside the county.
Patty's death was announced on the high school's loud speaker the next morning. Tragedy wasn't new to Pennsbury that year. In October and November, two students died in car wrecks. Another suffered a brain aneurysm. A fourth student was accidentally shot and killed by his father.
But Patty's murder came with no explanation. The cops had no witnesses and little evidence. The murder weapon wasn't recovered.
A bystander outside the mall later told police he heard a disturbance. He saw a woman move from one side of his peripheral vision to another. But he figured kids were goofing around.
After a few days, police said they were looking for a blue Volkswagen, pre-1968 model, which was seen cruising the mall that night before speeding away.
Detectives hired a hypnotist, a doctor in New Jersey, to try to get more information from bystanders. It produced a license plate number of a blue Volkswagen - but not necessarily the one seen that night. It was driven by a man from New Jersey. He was cleared.
After another few days, police said they were looking for a man who drove a 1963 or 1964 model Dodge Dart with blue paint and a loud motor. Police released a composite sketch of a white man with collar-length brown hair and a pock-marked, ruddy face. He wore a brown coat.
The sketch led to calls from as far away as Delaware and Connecticut. No arrests followed.
A source close to the investigation in 1975 said police put together numerous "lead cards" on the case, focusing on possible suspects. Someone would call and give a name or some information. The detectives then followed up.
For instance, if the person drove a blue Volkswagen, police would learn that the man wrecked it weeks before the killing. And they would double check that with the junk yard. Or the person was still out of the country, serving in the military, at the time of the killing.
"Everything within reason was followed up and double checked," the source said.
"There was never any one particular person that at least I myself locked in on," the source continued. "Some cases, you have a hunch and you chase it and you get lucky. On this one, no."
A knife was found outside the mall many months after the murder. But it couldn't be directly traced back to Patty.
Maniscola often thinks about the case.
"When I was a detective (in Middletown), I locked up a guy who raped a 9-year-old girl," Maniscola said. "I felt really good about that. But I feel that this case was the biggest failure of my career."
Baranoski, who is now a district judge, picked up the case in the 1990s. He said Patty's boyfriend was questioned several times by police over the years. And he cooperated with them. Baranoski said the boyfriend was given two polygraph tests, which he passed.
Baranoski said a man serving a long prison sentence in Buffalo, N.Y., called to say he had information. But all he could offer was speculation - nothing about the actual stabbing.
Then, someone from the community suggested Clark, the serial killer.
"Assuming no rational explanation, then you look at the possibility that something irrational happened," Baranoski said.
Baranoski developed a rapport with the detectives who had investigated Clark. They believed he wouldn't lie to Baranoski. Clark, who was serving a life sentence, had nothing to lose.
After he denied involvement, "we were back to square one," Baranoski said.
The Garden
In 1975, a garden was planted in Patty's memory inside the front entrance of Pennsbury High School. A plaque with her name on it and a poem still hang nearby. So does a black-and-white sketch of her face.
Over the years, the plants in the garden kept dying. There was often more dirt than foliage. The garden bed, which sits under a staircase and is shallow because of the building's foundation, was hard to maintain, officials said.
Eventually, the school put artificial ferns and other plants in the mulch. A school administrator said she asked Patty's mother if it was OK.
Glenn Bartlett said he doesn't care much for the fake plants.
"Artificial is dead," he said. "Living is alive."
Recently, like a chorus, Jeff, Glenn and Jeanette said the same thing - that someone has information about Patty's murder but they're not talking.
"They must have no conscience or no soul," Glenn Bartlett said. "If somebody knows something, it's time to put things to rest."
Anyone with information is asked to call Middletown Detective Andrew Amoroso at 215-750-3863.
Ben Finley can be reached at 215-949-4203 or bfinley@philllyBurbs.com.
January 31, 2010 02:49 AM
35 years later, girl's murder unsolved
TEXT SIZE
By: BEN FINLEY
Bucks County Courier Times
Pennsbury High School senior Patty Bartlett was stabbed to death outside the Oxford Valley Mall.
One theory was that a serial killer did it.
So, in the late 1990s, then-Middletown detective Daniel Baranoski traveled to a maximum-security penitentiary in Maryland. He sat down with Hadden Clark, a man estimated to have killed up to 13 people, many of them women, on the East Coast.
Baranoski asked Clark if he had anything to do with the fatal stabbing of a Pennsbury High School senior, Patty Bartlett, outside the Oxford Valley Mall in 1975.
Clark said he had to think about it. He stared at the prison walls as he probed his memory.
A good chunk of Clark's teen years were spent in Morrisville and Yardley. He graduated from Pennsbury in 1972. Although all his killings are believed to have occurred outside this area, it wouldn't be out of character, Baranoski thought.
But Clark's answer was "no."
Patty's murder - which occurred 35 years ago this month - remains unsolved.
Baranoski's interview with Clark is emblematic of the efforts made to try to solve the fatal stabbing.
All the rational explanations for her murder - attempted robbery, attempted sexual assault, a quarrel outside the mall with someone she knew - have gone unproven. The irrational ones, such as serial killer, haven't stuck, either.
Plenty of rumors have surrounded the killing. Baranoski conducted another jailhouse interview. Polygraph tests were administered. Potential witnesses at the mall were hypnotized. But no charges followed.
Another former Middletown detective who worked the case called it the failure of his career.
A free spirit
Patty was the second of four children. Her father, Neal, was a steelworker. Her mother, Clara, was a homemaker. The family, which includes brothers Jeff and Glenn and sister Jeanette, lived on Big Oak Road in Lower Makefield.
Patty's smile is still seared into the memories of her classmates.
"I thought she was the most beautiful girl in the school," recalled Michael Fevang, a classmate of Patty's who now lives in Maryland.
"But it wasn't just on the surface," he continued. "She had this free spirit that stood out from everyone else. And I don't mean that in the 1970s way. I mean it like she had no ego."
Patty had a passion for photography. Before she died, she was working on a series of portraits of her younger sister, who was 5, sitting on tree stumps and playing with her cat.
"When she did portraits, it wasn't the standard, looking at your face. It was over her shoulder or over your shoulder," said another classmate, Daniel Hornick, of Levittown. "It was very artistic."
Patty's love of photography took her to the mall on the evening of Jan. 13, a Monday. Snow was in the forecast, inspiring her to take photos.
Patty needed to buy photo paper and toner at the mall. That evening, she parked the family's light green Olds-mobile Cutlass near the mall entrance east of Gimbels, which is now Sears. A regular at The Camera Shop, she chatted with employees at the counter.
It was dark - about 5:30 p.m. - when Patty returned to the Oldsmobile. Snow and sleet shrouded the parking lot.
The 17-year-old was stabbed four times - twice in the chest and twice in the groin area. The knife was believed to be sharp, three quarters of an inch thick and 6 inches or 7 inches long.
Patty staggered 100 feet from the car to Gimbels, collapsing inside. Her hands clutched her umbrella and purse. Her wallet was still inside her purse, untouched.
In the ambulance, paramedics asked Patty for her name, address and religion, which she gave. No one asked for details about the stabbing.
"You can't fault the rescue squad," said Anthony Maniscola, a former Middletown detective and the lead investigator on the case in 1975. "They were trying to keep her conscious and alive."
Patty lived for another 50 minutes. She died at Middletown's St. Mary Medical Center. One of the stab wounds punctured her lung and heart. The cause of her death was internal bleeding.
Initially, there was some confusion about the stabbing victim's identity, Patty's older brother, Jeff recalled.
That evening, Jeff, who was 19, was at his girlfriend's house watching television. His girlfriend's father got a call from police. They told him his daughter had been stabbed to death, Jeff Bartlett said.
But Jeff's girlfriend's father told the officer: "That can't be. I'm staring at her right now."
It turned out Patty had Jeff's girlfriend's ID. The drinking age back then was 18.
When Maniscola, the Middletown detective, arrived at the mall, he found blood on the exterior doors of Gimbels and on the floor inside. He told a janitor to stop mopping it up.
The detective followed a trail of blood to the Oldsmobile. A bag of photography supplies was getting wet on the pavement. Patty's blood was washing away in the sleet.
Later on, Maniscola went to the hospital. He was there when Patty's father arrived. She was already dead.
Neal Bartlett cradled Patty in his arms, telling her everything was going to be OK.
No explanation
Twelve detectives from Middletown and the county worked the case. They set up a trailer outside the mall.
Advertisement
Detectives started interviewing everyone Patty knew, including her boyfriend and folks she worked with at Cocos, a restaurant on Lincoln Highway.
The mall itself was its own kind of lead. Relatively new and situated off Route 1, the mall enticed criminals from Philadelphia and Trenton. In the months prior to the murder, Maniscola said he arrested plenty of thieves, muggers and purse-snatchers who lived outside the county.
Patty's death was announced on the high school's loud speaker the next morning. Tragedy wasn't new to Pennsbury that year. In October and November, two students died in car wrecks. Another suffered a brain aneurysm. A fourth student was accidentally shot and killed by his father.
But Patty's murder came with no explanation. The cops had no witnesses and little evidence. The murder weapon wasn't recovered.
A bystander outside the mall later told police he heard a disturbance. He saw a woman move from one side of his peripheral vision to another. But he figured kids were goofing around.
After a few days, police said they were looking for a blue Volkswagen, pre-1968 model, which was seen cruising the mall that night before speeding away.
Detectives hired a hypnotist, a doctor in New Jersey, to try to get more information from bystanders. It produced a license plate number of a blue Volkswagen - but not necessarily the one seen that night. It was driven by a man from New Jersey. He was cleared.
After another few days, police said they were looking for a man who drove a 1963 or 1964 model Dodge Dart with blue paint and a loud motor. Police released a composite sketch of a white man with collar-length brown hair and a pock-marked, ruddy face. He wore a brown coat.
The sketch led to calls from as far away as Delaware and Connecticut. No arrests followed.
A source close to the investigation in 1975 said police put together numerous "lead cards" on the case, focusing on possible suspects. Someone would call and give a name or some information. The detectives then followed up.
For instance, if the person drove a blue Volkswagen, police would learn that the man wrecked it weeks before the killing. And they would double check that with the junk yard. Or the person was still out of the country, serving in the military, at the time of the killing.
"Everything within reason was followed up and double checked," the source said.
"There was never any one particular person that at least I myself locked in on," the source continued. "Some cases, you have a hunch and you chase it and you get lucky. On this one, no."
A knife was found outside the mall many months after the murder. But it couldn't be directly traced back to Patty.
Maniscola often thinks about the case.
"When I was a detective (in Middletown), I locked up a guy who raped a 9-year-old girl," Maniscola said. "I felt really good about that. But I feel that this case was the biggest failure of my career."
Baranoski, who is now a district judge, picked up the case in the 1990s. He said Patty's boyfriend was questioned several times by police over the years. And he cooperated with them. Baranoski said the boyfriend was given two polygraph tests, which he passed.
Baranoski said a man serving a long prison sentence in Buffalo, N.Y., called to say he had information. But all he could offer was speculation - nothing about the actual stabbing.
Then, someone from the community suggested Clark, the serial killer.
"Assuming no rational explanation, then you look at the possibility that something irrational happened," Baranoski said.
Baranoski developed a rapport with the detectives who had investigated Clark. They believed he wouldn't lie to Baranoski. Clark, who was serving a life sentence, had nothing to lose.
After he denied involvement, "we were back to square one," Baranoski said.
The Garden
In 1975, a garden was planted in Patty's memory inside the front entrance of Pennsbury High School. A plaque with her name on it and a poem still hang nearby. So does a black-and-white sketch of her face.
Over the years, the plants in the garden kept dying. There was often more dirt than foliage. The garden bed, which sits under a staircase and is shallow because of the building's foundation, was hard to maintain, officials said.
Eventually, the school put artificial ferns and other plants in the mulch. A school administrator said she asked Patty's mother if it was OK.
Glenn Bartlett said he doesn't care much for the fake plants.
"Artificial is dead," he said. "Living is alive."
Recently, like a chorus, Jeff, Glenn and Jeanette said the same thing - that someone has information about Patty's murder but they're not talking.
"They must have no conscience or no soul," Glenn Bartlett said. "If somebody knows something, it's time to put things to rest."
Anyone with information is asked to call Middletown Detective Andrew Amoroso at 215-750-3863.
Ben Finley can be reached at 215-949-4203 or bfinley@philllyBurbs.com.
January 31, 2010 02:49 AM