Saturday, November 10, 2012
The mother said her daughter had been abducted on the South Side but, later, the mother's boyfriend confessed to burying the toddler in Brookline.
The image of a little girl on a grocery shopping trip with her mother—then suddenly gone. That was happened the day of March 9, 1982 when Melody Childs Thomas told police that her daughter, Nicole Lynn Bryner, 3, had been abducted from a shopping cart at the Giant Eagle supermarket on the South Side of Pittsburgh. Though there were extensive searches, no trace of Nicole was ever found. Then, in 1986, Timothy Widman, Childs' boyfriend at the time, allegedly confessed he had punched Bryner and accidentally killed her. He told police that he and Childs' buried the body in a wooded area along Timberland Road in Brookline. Police searched unsuccessfully for the body. Without it, prosecutors could not pursue the case. But in 1988, a Superior …
Saturday, August 4, 2012
After the ‘woman at the bus stop’ tells her story about the day schoolgirl Beth Barr disappeared in 1977, other Patch readers offer more clues.
Editor’s note: This story originally ran in November 2011 on many Western PA Patch sites. Since that time, several persons have come forward with more information they feel can be helpful to the case, including potential suspects, possible vehicles used and other information, which has been shared with Allegheny County homicide detectives. The identity of the woman interviewed for this story is being withheld for her safety. The woman stood alone at about 8:30 a.m. on Nov. 23, 1977, at a Port Authority Transit stop in Wilkinsburg, waiting for the bus that would take her to her job in downtown Pittsburgh. The 24-year-old had grown up in Wilkinsburg, and she and her husband had purchased a property on nearby Rebecca Avenue, which they were …
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
The ‘woman at the bus stop’ tells her story about the day Wilkinsburg schoolgirl Beth Barr disappeared on Thanksgiving eve 1977.
The woman stood alone at about 8:30 a.m. on Nov. 23, 1977, at a Port Authority Transit stop in Wilkinsburg, waiting for the bus that would take her to her job in downtown Pittsburgh. The 24-year-old had grown up in Wilkinsburg, and she and her husband had purchased a property on nearby Rebecca Avenue, which they were remodeling. The bus stop was close by on Ardmore Boulevard. As she waited in the chilly November air, a motorist pulled his car off the street, partially into an alley and onto the paved area of an auto repair garage—right next to her. “To the best of my recollection,” the woman said, during an interview last week, “... he made a suggestion I did not appreciate.” Something about the man instinctually heightened the woman’s …
Michelle
7:36 am on Saturday, August 4, 2012
I remember this like it was yesterday. My family lived in Wilkinsburg at the time, my father was the Fire Chief. He and many other fireman searched the area that night. more ›