Original 1977 coverage day four:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-U3VPjNm3VXQzd1SG5FR0lZXzQwNWFYdk9SUGNzOUx4RzE0/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-U3VPjNm3VXTzF2Vno1bTd6TENRUk1MT2g5SUUxcVVMLWpz/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-U3VPjNm3VXeEdTeWpSNlBjbU1ULVI3cURXMVgwcC04MFpF/view?usp=sharing
Bucks County Courier Times
Thursday, June 16, 1977
(FRONT PAGE)
Yardley occultist:
‘Nobody DOES these things’
by Bill Newill
Courier Times Writer
(image of Mt. Gilead church cemetery with caption:
Body found near this Buckingham Mountain church prompted queries about possible cult slaying)
When investigators recognized the bizarre nature of the murder of a young Bristol woman whose nude, mutilated body was found on Buckingham Mountain Sunday afternoon, one of the first persons they contacted was a 30-year-old Yardley woman named Eileen Lazorisak.
Detectives went to her E. College Avenue home Monday not because they thought she was involved but because she is considered one of the most knowledgeable persons in the Bucks County area in matters of occult lore and ritual.
The victim’s torso had been slit open and most of her internal organs removed, police said. It had the earmarks of a grotesque, ritualistic cult slaying, reminiscent of the infamous Manson murders in California.
The detectives wanted to know if it were possible the murder could have been the work of an outlaw cult and if the place the body was dumped had any occult significance.
“The whole think leaves me utterly horrified. Nobody DOES these types of things,” Ellen Lasorisak says emphatically.
“They had asked me if I knew of any rituals where something like this would be done. I just don’t know of (Continued on Page A10, Col. 1) anything like that.
‘Murder not occult killing’
“I can’t find anything in ritual practice that would be even remotely along those lines. It is so far out; they would have to be into a totally sadistic type of thing. It’s not even a satanistic-type thing. It’s beyond that.
“I can see where they might have gotten this impression. But there is no proof it is anything to do with the occult.”
The detectives thought the location might have been significant—near a church and a graveyard at the top of Buckingham Mountain., a Bucks County landmark prominent to local history and folklore.
“It could be the killer thought the place had some significance or it could be he went there just because it’s a secluded area,” Eileen Lazorisack says.
“I’ve been here 10 years and I’ve heard tales and tales about the mountain, ghost stories mostly.”
The section of Holicong Road which winds over the mountain near where the body was found is known among local teenagers as a “gravity hill”—a place where you can stop a car and let it coast and it will appear to be rolling uphill. It is possible the killer knew the place in that context.
Ellen Lazorasak says she is worried speculation the killing had occult significance will damage the reputation of legitimate occultists, whose practices are “based on life, not death.”
“After working it out astrologically and timewise, I could find no occult timing to this whatsoever. There was no festival, no dark of the moon. It was not the time for sacrifice, even by a far stretch of the imagination. I have to believe that his was the work of a very sick person.”
(FRONT PAGE BOTTOM. Image of drawing of long-haired dude. Caption: Police sketch of man wanted for questioning in slaying)
Arrest expected in Buckingham murder
By Lanny Morgnanesi
And Mike Dunn
A suspect described by one police source as a “dirtball” may be arrested tomorrow and charged with the savage killing of 20-year-old Shaun Eileen Ritterson of Bristol Borough, the source said.
With information from witnesses, police have put together a composite sketch of a man seen leaving the Club Capri Friday night with the murder victim. It was the last time she was seen alive.
Jack Lister, police said, is the key witness in the search for the man. He is employed as the bouncer at the Levittown nightspot and is the cousin of Miss Ritterson.
Saw man
Police said Lister remembers seeing this man around Lower Bucks County on several occasions, but with the exception of the Capri, he cannot remember where.
Today he will search though old high school year books hoping to pinpoint the man, police said.
The body of Miss Ritterson was found Sunday on a rural mountain road to Buckingham Township. She had been stabbed five times then slit open. Her organs were removed and were not found at the scene.
At first it was assumed the victim died of the stab wounds, but a police source has said medical examiners think she may have survived the five punctures. They were not in vital spots, the source said.
Police said they have not ruled out any theories on the killing. One officer said the possibility the killing was related to occult worship was pursued. Also, the crazed hunter theory is being reviewed, he said.
Carcass washed
The victim’s carcass was washed out by the killer in the same way a hunter cleans a deer carcass.
The officer who described the suspect as a “dirtball,” thinks he knows the man from a previous arrest. He said the suspect is more sloppy in appearance than in the sketch being circulated among law enforcement officials.
The police source declined to say what the previous arrest was for.
A second witness who may be able to identify the killer is Donna Wheeler, a friend of Shaun’s who accompanied her to the Club Capri on Friday.
Miss Wheeler said a “weirdo” at the bar had been following her around all night. He stopped after she swore at him and told him to leave her alone. She speculates that man might have picked up Shaun.
Lister’s description of the man he saw is similar to Miss Wheeler’s mental picture of the “weirdo.”
Although the police source who believes he knows the suspect is optimistic about an arrest, District Attorney Kenneth Biehn is more reserved in his comments.
“It’s not fair to say an arrest is imminent,” Biehn said this morning. He said the man the bouncer saw is wanted for questioning and is “not necessarily” being considered a suspect.
“We’re waiting for a break,” he said. “It may come in a day or it may come in a week.”
According to one police officer, Shaun Eileen Ritterson often went to bars and left with men. After meeting them, she would return to her apartment on Spring Street and write the man’s initials on her calendar.
Police have confiscated the calendar as evidence.
The person who killed Shaun Eileen Ritterson probably incapably of functioning sexually and was rejected by his victim, according to two area psychologists contacted by the Bucks County Courier Times.
Dr. Jerome T.[sic: E] Thompson, a child and family psychologist who has testified in past murder trials in Bucks, theorized the murderer probably was unable to have “normal heterosexual relation and Miss Ritterson’s reaction provoked his deadly outburst.”
“Sick individual”
“I think we are dealing with a sick individual,” said Thompson.
Another psychologist with experience in reconstructing the mental states of psychopathic murderers concurred with Thompson’s analysis.
“In this type of brutal slaying, a lot of times you are dealing with a sexually inadequate man who has been rejected, offered Dr. Robert Strochak, who is also a psychologist with the Delaware Valley Mental Health Foundation.
“Sometimes they feel like they’re doing the girl a favor. Their own aggressive drives are confused,” he said.
Possible sacrifice
Strochak, who also works for the Bucks County Diagnostic Center, also said the murder may be a sacrifice.
“The disembowelment is similar to what some primitive cultures do,” he said.
“Then again it may be someone who goes on a rampage every now and then. The stabbing is similar to the girl who was murdered at the Oxford Valley Mall a couple of years ago. They never caught her killer,” Strochak said, in reference to the murder of 17-year-old Patty Bartlett.
“The neat, methodical butchering has all the traits of a ritualistic killing,” said Thompson, an associate professor [at] Bucks County Community College.
Thompson said the method indicates the killer had a rigid lifestyle.
Anger expression
“The murderer probably has a great difficulty expressing anger. He feels expressing anger would tear him apart. His upbringing may forbid it,” Thompson said.
“It is possible the killer’s parents did not accept him. It sounds like he had a domineering father,” Thompson said.
Thompson said he is almost certain the killer is a man because of the murder’s similarity to hunting and skinning an animal.
“A woman may have done it and attempted to make it look like a man did. But I think a man did it,” Thompson said.
Sexual overtones
“The murder has sexual overtones. Taking the organs are a symbolic taking of the woman. The killer is saying, “I’ve got her. She’s with me,” Thompson said.
In some ritualistic killings to which the organs are removed, the murderer eats the organs, Thompson said.
“I’m not saying this happened in this case,” he added.
Thompson said the killer probably knew Miss Ritterson. “If she rejected him, he probably knew her,” Thompson said.
“But he may have worshipped her from afar. He may finally have made some kind of awkward, bumbling approach and was rebuked,” Thompson said.
There have been been two other bizarre murders in the last year, the slaying of the Abe family and the Vogenberger murders.
Thompson blames the murders on the law which governs who should be committed to mental institutions.
Blames law
“We call it the gun in the mouth law. It says a hostile, destructive act must be witnessed before someone is committed. The burden is on the claimant,” Thompson said.
That law should be changed to protect people like the girl who was killed,” Thompson said.
“Miss Ritterson was nude. The only thing on her was a gold ring with the word “love” on it.
Thompson said, “Maybe the killer was sending an unconscious message:
I love her, but I couldn’t have her.”
