http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/88337727.html
March 18, 2010
For 42 years, the black-and-white yearbook image of Candace Clothier - '60s-style bangs beneath a white mini-bow - had haunted a graying band of police investigators.
On March 9, 1968, the 16-year-old Lincoln High School student with the midnight Saturday curfew left her Northeast Philadelphia home around 8 p.m.
She never returned.
Five weeks later, after a massive search, extensive news coverage, and hundreds of police interviews, Clothier's body was found stuffed inside a black bag on a secluded island in Bucks County's Neshaminy Creek.
Yesterday, Bucks County District Attorney David Heckler announced the official end of the case, convinced that police had gotten as close to the truth as possible and that those who had caused the girl's death were long-deceased.
Authorities believe that Clothier most likely died of an overdose of drugs that she may have been forced to take or that were injected into her without her consent.
One of the three men involved had a history of forcibly injecting humans and animals, Heckler said.
He refused to identify the men, saying all were slightly older than Clothier and had died between 1975 and 2000 of causes he would not disclose.
"These men are dead and beyond the reach of human justice," Heckler said. Since they can neither be charged nor defend themselves, identifying them would "simply blacken their family's names or impact unfairly on their relatives.":waitasec:
