Sunday, January 6, 2013
Ritter was the fourth young woman killed in seven months in Washington County in 1976-77.
The rape and strangulation death of Brenda Lee Ritter, 18, of North Strabane Township on May 19, 1977 is a case that still haunts police. Her death occurred as the fourth in a series of slayings of young women in Washington County. The murders of Deborah Capiola, Mary Irene Gency and Susan Rush left county residents on edge. The death of Barbara Lewis in Penn Hills within the same time frame left investigators wondering if her strangulation death was at the hands of the same killer. According to a Sept. 28, 2003 story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Brenda left her boyfriend's home in Chartiers Township about 10:10 p.m. May 18, 1977 during a raging thunderstorm. Her boyfriend, Larry Bonazza, and his mother made sure the doors of Brenda's …
Sunday, October 14, 2012
A woman's body was discovered in the river at Fox Chapel in 2003, but she has never been identified.
The Allegheny River is pretty in the fall—the colors of the leaves reflect off the water and when the sky is blue, it can look like a picture postcard. But sometimes all that's pretty from a distance isn't as beautiful up close and under the surface. Sometimes the Allegheny River carries litter, tree limbs and other debris from far upstream. A worker saw something in the middle of the river channel off Old Freeport Road, near the Fox Chapel Yacht Club in O'Hara Township, on Oct. 23, 2003 that at night looked like garbage. The next day, at approximately 10 a.m., the (debris) came closer to shore. At that point, a worker suspected that it might be a body and called 911. A woman's body, wrapped in a blue blanket and bound with duct tape, was …
Monday, June 27, 2011
The Renfrew resident was charged Saturday after the incident at the Doubletree Hotel in North Strabane.
North Strabane police charged a Butler County man with indecent exposure and open lewdness after he reportedly exposed his genitals to a crowd of guests attending an outdoor wedding on Saturday. Police said Randy Wayne Northcutt, 44, had been warned once by the manager of the Doubletree Hotel on Racetrack Road that guests at the poolside wedding had complained "that a white male was exposing his genitals from a window on the fourth floor." According to the complaint, the manager told Northcutt that "there were young children outside and that he needs (to) close the curtain for the window and to stop exposing his genitals, or that he would call the police." A few minutes later, the manager received another complaint and summoned police just…
