Two men charged in the 1978 disappearance of five teenagers in Newark, New Jersey, pleaded not guilty to five counts of murder Wednesday morning as about 40 family members of the victims looked on. Tonight, in our crime and punishment report, we’ll look into the case.
The story got us thinking about cold cases and missing persons cases around the country. Check out the National Missing Persons Database. It allows you to search nationwide for missing persons using a variety of search features. Anyone may search the database, but by registering in the system both law enforcement professionals and the general public will also be able to:
NEWARK, N.J. — One night in 1978, five teenage boys disappeared without a trace in what would become one of the longest and most baffling missing-persons cases New Jersey has ever seen.
Thirty-two years later, prosecutors announced the arrests of two men and disclosed the victims’ gruesome fate: They were herded at gunpoint into an abandoned building in a dispute over missing drugs and burned to death in a blaze that obliterated nearly all evidence.
“For years, their families have wondered what happened on that August day,” acting Essex County Prosecutor Robert Laurino said Tuesday. “Today, we believe that question has been answered.”
A relative of one of the victims said that one of the men charged with the crimes, 56-year-old Lee Evans, confessed to him 18 months ago, setting investigators on the task of corroborating the confession. On Tuesday, authorities would only say that a witness came forward then but didn’t give details.
“He just told me what happened,” Rogers Taylor, brother of Ernest Taylor, told reporters Tuesday.
Over the years, investigators conducted a nationwide search for the teens, chased hundreds of dead-end leads and enlisted at least two psychics. In the end, the evidence led back to a site just blocks from where the victims were last seen, in the same neighborhood where four of the teens lived, played and went to high school together.
Investigators believe that’s where two boys were taken into an abandoned house, followed later by three more. It was not known what pretense was used to get them to the house.
Laurino said the men restrained the boys and then set the house on fire. The five were believed to have died from the flames and not from gunshots, he said.
The house was destroyed in the blaze, as were houses on either side of it, Laurino said. The five bodies were never found, possibly because no one thought to look for remains in an unoccupied home. The boys were not reported missing until two days later.
Arrested late Monday were Evans, of nearby Irvington, who routinely hired teenagers to help with odd jobs; and Philander Hampton, 53, of Jersey City. They allegedly acted in retaliation for the theft of some marijuana.
Each is charged with five counts of murder and one count of arson. Both were being held on $5 million bail ahead of an arraignment scheduled for Wednesday. Prosecutors did not know whether the suspects had attorneys.
Both men were questioned after the boys disappeared, but neither was charged. Evans passed a lie-detector test… Read full story here
