Unsolved Cases: Richard and Donna Hyde of Moon Township

While it is widely believed that serial killer Edward Surratt is responsible for their deaths, he never admitted to the slayings nor was he ever charged in their deaths.

Richard Hyde, the principal of Fern Hollow Elementary School in Moon Township, was talking with a friend on the phone in the bedroom of his home he shared with his wife, Donna and two daughters. That was about 1 a.m. on Saturday, Dec. 3, 1977. During the conversation, he heard glass break in a window on the other end of his ranch home. After hanging up, he walked past a nightstand that contained a loaded gun and proceeded to the hallway, according to a story in the Beaver County Times. A 12-gauge shotgun blast ripped through his chest/abdomen area. He staggered to the kitchen, past his wife who was in a bathroom off the hallway, and died in a pool of blood on the linoleum floor of the kitchen. Donna, a beautician who had a shop in her home…

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