Title: Turner, Alvin 08/20/1978
Description: NJ, Newark
Description: NJ, Newark
wv171 - August 17, 2008 06:54 PM (GMT)
30 Years Later -- 5 Teens Still Missing
Community Remembers Boys Who Vanished
NEW YORK -- Thirty years ago, five teenage boys vanished after playing basketball in Newark, N.J. They were never heard from again.
Their remains were never found, Social Security numbers never used -- and no arrests have ever been made. But the community has never forgotten its tragic loss.
Melvin Pittman, 17, Randy Johnson, 16, Ernest Taylor, 17, Alvin Turner, 16, and Michael McDowell, 16, who have become known as "The Clinton Avenue Five," vanished Aug. 20, 1978. Wednesday marks the 30th anniversary of their disappearance.
The case, which is New Jersey's oldest cold case, remains open. But after 30 years without any solid leads, it's unclear what, if anything, is left to find.
And although most of the boys' family members are dead, the community remembers.
An annual memorial service is held at Clinton Avenue Presbyterian Church. On Sunday, the Rev. Alfred Johnson led an 11 a.m. service at the church on 16th Street.
News 4 New York talked to family members of one of the missing boys. Stay tuned for the broadcast Sunday night.
Facts Of The Case
The teens were last seen entering the pickup truck of a man who reportedly offered them summer part-time work -- and they were never seen again. Police questioned the contractor, Lee Anthony Evans, and cleared him of suspicion after he passed polygraph tests.
Several days after the boys disappeared, one of their mothers got a phone call from a man who said he would tell her where the boys were for $750. Police traced the call to a payphone at Union Station in Washington, D.C., but by the time they arrived, whoever had made the call apparently had fled.
The investigation has taken detectives all over the country.
Detectives checked military records, religious cults, the bodies from Jim Jones' 1978 mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, according to Reuters, and the victims of Chicago serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who was executed for the rape and murder of 33 boys and men -- to no avail.
In 1996, police followed a lead from a psychic who had previously helped detectives find the body of a missing boy in a drainpipe. The psychic had a vision the boys' burned remains were buried in a five-acre field near Newark International Airport. Searchers came up empty-handed.
The boys' Social Security numbers were never used. Only one of the five had dental records; none had fingerprints, Reuters reported.
"You have to wonder what transpired,'' Sgt. Derek Glenn, a spokesman for the Newark Police Department, told Reuters on the week of the 20th anniversary of the disappearance. "Even one of them alive, having made contact in some fashion or form, even through a third person, hasn't happened.''
Police initially believed the boys had run away, but the family said they weren't the type to do that. Just one of the boys, McDowell, of East Orange, got into trouble once for a fistfight, but the others -- sophomores and juniors at Weequahic High School -- never got into trouble at all, according to The New York Times.
But despite the disturbing, painful facts of their disappearance, there was precious little media coverage at the time. It was 1978 -- a decade after the Newark riots -- and many speculated that the reason local papers -- even The Star-Ledger -- and media outlets failed to cover the story at the time was because it was about five black boys.
On the 25th anniversary of the disappearance, a New York Times article read, "The five black youths never entered the public consciousness the way some white, middle-class missing children do."
The advent of the Internet might have made it a different story today, but there was no World Wide Web when the boys disappeared. Today, Web surfers would be hard-pressed to find any information apart from one or two articles marking the 20th and 25th anniversaries of the boys' disappearance.
Only two of the original detectives who worked on the missing persons case remain involved. One died and one retired to Florida. A new detective, Rasheed Sabur, is involved.
No arrests have ever been made in the decades-old case, which some investigators call one of the most baffling missing persons cases in history.
http://www.doenetwork.org/
http://www.wnbc.com/news/17213231/detail.html
Community Remembers Boys Who Vanished
NEW YORK -- Thirty years ago, five teenage boys vanished after playing basketball in Newark, N.J. They were never heard from again.
Their remains were never found, Social Security numbers never used -- and no arrests have ever been made. But the community has never forgotten its tragic loss.
Melvin Pittman, 17, Randy Johnson, 16, Ernest Taylor, 17, Alvin Turner, 16, and Michael McDowell, 16, who have become known as "The Clinton Avenue Five," vanished Aug. 20, 1978. Wednesday marks the 30th anniversary of their disappearance.
The case, which is New Jersey's oldest cold case, remains open. But after 30 years without any solid leads, it's unclear what, if anything, is left to find.
And although most of the boys' family members are dead, the community remembers.
An annual memorial service is held at Clinton Avenue Presbyterian Church. On Sunday, the Rev. Alfred Johnson led an 11 a.m. service at the church on 16th Street.
News 4 New York talked to family members of one of the missing boys. Stay tuned for the broadcast Sunday night.
Facts Of The Case
The teens were last seen entering the pickup truck of a man who reportedly offered them summer part-time work -- and they were never seen again. Police questioned the contractor, Lee Anthony Evans, and cleared him of suspicion after he passed polygraph tests.
Several days after the boys disappeared, one of their mothers got a phone call from a man who said he would tell her where the boys were for $750. Police traced the call to a payphone at Union Station in Washington, D.C., but by the time they arrived, whoever had made the call apparently had fled.
The investigation has taken detectives all over the country.
Detectives checked military records, religious cults, the bodies from Jim Jones' 1978 mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, according to Reuters, and the victims of Chicago serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who was executed for the rape and murder of 33 boys and men -- to no avail.
In 1996, police followed a lead from a psychic who had previously helped detectives find the body of a missing boy in a drainpipe. The psychic had a vision the boys' burned remains were buried in a five-acre field near Newark International Airport. Searchers came up empty-handed.
The boys' Social Security numbers were never used. Only one of the five had dental records; none had fingerprints, Reuters reported.
"You have to wonder what transpired,'' Sgt. Derek Glenn, a spokesman for the Newark Police Department, told Reuters on the week of the 20th anniversary of the disappearance. "Even one of them alive, having made contact in some fashion or form, even through a third person, hasn't happened.''
Police initially believed the boys had run away, but the family said they weren't the type to do that. Just one of the boys, McDowell, of East Orange, got into trouble once for a fistfight, but the others -- sophomores and juniors at Weequahic High School -- never got into trouble at all, according to The New York Times.
But despite the disturbing, painful facts of their disappearance, there was precious little media coverage at the time. It was 1978 -- a decade after the Newark riots -- and many speculated that the reason local papers -- even The Star-Ledger -- and media outlets failed to cover the story at the time was because it was about five black boys.
On the 25th anniversary of the disappearance, a New York Times article read, "The five black youths never entered the public consciousness the way some white, middle-class missing children do."
The advent of the Internet might have made it a different story today, but there was no World Wide Web when the boys disappeared. Today, Web surfers would be hard-pressed to find any information apart from one or two articles marking the 20th and 25th anniversaries of the boys' disappearance.
Only two of the original detectives who worked on the missing persons case remain involved. One died and one retired to Florida. A new detective, Rasheed Sabur, is involved.
No arrests have ever been made in the decades-old case, which some investigators call one of the most baffling missing persons cases in history.
http://www.doenetwork.org/
http://www.wnbc.com/news/17213231/detail.html
Ell - August 17, 2008 07:40 PM (GMT)
oldies4mari2004 - August 18, 2008 03:55 PM (GMT)
Alvin Turner
Missing since August 20, 1978 from Newark, Essex County, New Jersey
Classification: Endangered Missing
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vital Statistics
Age at Time of Disappearance: 16 years old
Distinguishing Characteristics: Black male.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Circumstances of Disappearance
Alvin Turner of Clinton Avenue, Melvin Pittman, Randy Johnson, Ernest Taylor and Michael McDowell vanished after playing basketball in Newark, N.J. They were never heard from again. None of the five boys' Social Security numbers has surfaced in any known document, and not one of the teenagers has applied for a driver's license in New Jersey or elsewhere.
The teens were seen later that evening entering the pickup truck of a local carpenter, who routinely hired city teens to help him with odd jobs. Police questioned the contractor, and cleared him of suspicion after he passed polygraph tests. The contractor told detectives he hired the teens that day, but had dropped some of them off at 8 p.m. He said he intended to drive to the McDowell house, but instead drove with him to pick up the rest of the boys again at 10:30 p.m. to move some boxes to neighboring Irvington. He told police he drove the teens around before dropping them off at 11 p.m.
Several days after the boys disappeared, one of their mothers got a phone call from a man who said he would tell her where the boys were for $750. Police traced the call to a payphone at Union Station in Washington, D.C., but by the time they arrived, whoever had made the call apparently had fled.
Police initially believed the boys had run away, but the family said they weren't the type to do that. Just one of the boys, McDowell, of East Orange, got into trouble once for a fistfight, but the others -- sophomores and juniors at Weequahic High School -- never got into trouble at all.
Police officially continue to classify the case as a missing persons incident since they say no bodies have been found to determine a homicide has been committed. They have pursued at least a dozen possible leads over the years, including checking for the boys among the bodies from the November 1978 Jonestown massacre and searching military records.
http://www.doenetwork.org/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Investigators
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact:
Newark Police Department
973-733-6090
Source Information:
WNBC News
Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - August 24, 1998
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Missing since August 20, 1978 from Newark, Essex County, New Jersey
Classification: Endangered Missing
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vital Statistics
Age at Time of Disappearance: 16 years old
Distinguishing Characteristics: Black male.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Circumstances of Disappearance
Alvin Turner of Clinton Avenue, Melvin Pittman, Randy Johnson, Ernest Taylor and Michael McDowell vanished after playing basketball in Newark, N.J. They were never heard from again. None of the five boys' Social Security numbers has surfaced in any known document, and not one of the teenagers has applied for a driver's license in New Jersey or elsewhere.
The teens were seen later that evening entering the pickup truck of a local carpenter, who routinely hired city teens to help him with odd jobs. Police questioned the contractor, and cleared him of suspicion after he passed polygraph tests. The contractor told detectives he hired the teens that day, but had dropped some of them off at 8 p.m. He said he intended to drive to the McDowell house, but instead drove with him to pick up the rest of the boys again at 10:30 p.m. to move some boxes to neighboring Irvington. He told police he drove the teens around before dropping them off at 11 p.m.
Several days after the boys disappeared, one of their mothers got a phone call from a man who said he would tell her where the boys were for $750. Police traced the call to a payphone at Union Station in Washington, D.C., but by the time they arrived, whoever had made the call apparently had fled.
Police initially believed the boys had run away, but the family said they weren't the type to do that. Just one of the boys, McDowell, of East Orange, got into trouble once for a fistfight, but the others -- sophomores and juniors at Weequahic High School -- never got into trouble at all.
Police officially continue to classify the case as a missing persons incident since they say no bodies have been found to determine a homicide has been committed. They have pursued at least a dozen possible leads over the years, including checking for the boys among the bodies from the November 1978 Jonestown massacre and searching military records.
http://www.doenetwork.org/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Investigators
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact:
Newark Police Department
973-733-6090
Source Information:
WNBC News
Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - August 24, 1998
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
oldies4mari2004 - August 18, 2008 03:57 PM (GMT)
oldies4mari2004 - August 18, 2008 04:41 PM (GMT)
Ell - August 22, 2008 10:43 AM (GMT)
http://www.nj.com/newark/index.ssf/2008/08..._5_vanished.htm
lMore than 40,000 bodies lay unidentified in morgues around the country, their names, ages and families unknown to investigators.
Among this nameless and forgotten population, Terry Lawson hopes to find the remains of her brother.
After decades without a word or sign from brother Michael McDowell, Lawson's dreams of finding him alive have all but vanished.
McDowell is one of five teenagers who disappeared from the streets of Newark 30 years ago today without a trace.
What happened on Aug. 20, 1978, remains one of the most perplexing police mysteries in state history. So with no obvious signs detectives were closer to solving it, Lawson last June volunteered a swab of her cheek cells in hopes of making a DNA match with an unidentified corpse in the morgues, or any newly discovered remains.
Police agreed and they also obtained samples from the families of each missing teen.
"I pray that something comes of this DNA," said Lawson, 41, of Hillside. "At this point that's all we have."
Randy Johnson, 16, Michael McDowell, 16, Melvin Pittman, 17, Alvin Turner, 16, and Ernest Taylor, 17, were fast friends who had grown up in the same Newark neighborhood. By most accounts they had never been in trouble and were unlikely runaways.
The day the boys went missing was an August scorcher, and they had spent it playing pickup basketball games in West Side Park. Later most, if not all of them, helped load or unload boxes into the truck of Lee Evans, a local carpenter who routinely hired boys for odd jobs.
Sometime that evening, each had returned home, presumably to change clothes or grab a bite to eat, and each returned to the busy corner of Clinton Avenue and Fa byan Place, a central gathering point in the neighborhood. Police believe they left that area together.
From there the trail goes cold.
No piece of clothing, trace of blood or willing eyewitness was found.
Lawson, who was 11 at the time, said she was playing in front of the family home just before dusk when Evans drove up with her brother, then waited for him to come out again.
She said her brother shooed her inside, because it was dark. Then he climbed into the middle seat of Evans' pickup, entering from the driver's side. Then they drove off.
"I think we just need to know what happened that evening and how it happened," she said. "I don't think that anyone will even get arrested or go to trial, because people who know this information are probably dead now."
Relatives said they tried to re main optimistic. As the years passed, the optimism dwindled and they stopped running to answer each phone call as if it would bring new information. None ever came.
"We haven't heard anything -- nobody sent a letter or nothing for any of them," said Melvin Pittman's mother, Lillie Williams, 63, who remains in the same Newark neighborhood. "I have to live with this every single day of my life. It's just something you can't get out of your mind. Why? You just wonder why."
The sample swabs from families will be entered into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), an FBI-funded computer system that searches DNA profiles developed by law enforcement laboratories.
"That case will never go cold," said George Adams, a program coordinator at the Center for Human Identification in Fort Worth, Texas, which specializes in forensic DNA analysis.
He cited success in a case older than that of the missing teens -- a 2005 case in which forensic scientists used DNA to identify skeletal remains of a Fort Worth man found 42 years earlier.
Close to 300 bodies missing from the 1970s and 1980s have been identified in the U.S. and Canada in the past 10 years, most from use of DNA or dental records, said Jerry Nance, a forensic unit supervisor with the Center for Missing & Ex ploited Children, founded in 1984.
But older cases are difficult.
"A lot of unidentified bodies were cremated and buried or disposed of that didn't have any samples retained for DNA purposes," Nance said. Even today many medical examiners lack space to store old remains.
In Newark, dozens of detectives conducted hundreds of interviews, distributed thousands of fliers and posters and searched hospital wards for the youths. They reviewed lists of victims in the Atlanta serial killings and the mass suicides in Jonestown, Guyana. They even searched areas pinpointed by two psychics.
Newark Police Detective Rashid Sabur, who has handled the case since 1998 with partner Keith Sheppard, said the DNA samples and details from new interviews could prove valuable.
"We have gathered new information, and we're just continously pursuing it," said Sabur, who is assigned to the city inspector general's office. He declined to elaborate. "This is a case that can be solved. And based on the new information, I think we're getting closer and closer to that end."
lMore than 40,000 bodies lay unidentified in morgues around the country, their names, ages and families unknown to investigators.
Among this nameless and forgotten population, Terry Lawson hopes to find the remains of her brother.
After decades without a word or sign from brother Michael McDowell, Lawson's dreams of finding him alive have all but vanished.
McDowell is one of five teenagers who disappeared from the streets of Newark 30 years ago today without a trace.
What happened on Aug. 20, 1978, remains one of the most perplexing police mysteries in state history. So with no obvious signs detectives were closer to solving it, Lawson last June volunteered a swab of her cheek cells in hopes of making a DNA match with an unidentified corpse in the morgues, or any newly discovered remains.
Police agreed and they also obtained samples from the families of each missing teen.
"I pray that something comes of this DNA," said Lawson, 41, of Hillside. "At this point that's all we have."
Randy Johnson, 16, Michael McDowell, 16, Melvin Pittman, 17, Alvin Turner, 16, and Ernest Taylor, 17, were fast friends who had grown up in the same Newark neighborhood. By most accounts they had never been in trouble and were unlikely runaways.
The day the boys went missing was an August scorcher, and they had spent it playing pickup basketball games in West Side Park. Later most, if not all of them, helped load or unload boxes into the truck of Lee Evans, a local carpenter who routinely hired boys for odd jobs.
Sometime that evening, each had returned home, presumably to change clothes or grab a bite to eat, and each returned to the busy corner of Clinton Avenue and Fa byan Place, a central gathering point in the neighborhood. Police believe they left that area together.
From there the trail goes cold.
No piece of clothing, trace of blood or willing eyewitness was found.
Lawson, who was 11 at the time, said she was playing in front of the family home just before dusk when Evans drove up with her brother, then waited for him to come out again.
She said her brother shooed her inside, because it was dark. Then he climbed into the middle seat of Evans' pickup, entering from the driver's side. Then they drove off.
"I think we just need to know what happened that evening and how it happened," she said. "I don't think that anyone will even get arrested or go to trial, because people who know this information are probably dead now."
Relatives said they tried to re main optimistic. As the years passed, the optimism dwindled and they stopped running to answer each phone call as if it would bring new information. None ever came.
"We haven't heard anything -- nobody sent a letter or nothing for any of them," said Melvin Pittman's mother, Lillie Williams, 63, who remains in the same Newark neighborhood. "I have to live with this every single day of my life. It's just something you can't get out of your mind. Why? You just wonder why."
The sample swabs from families will be entered into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), an FBI-funded computer system that searches DNA profiles developed by law enforcement laboratories.
"That case will never go cold," said George Adams, a program coordinator at the Center for Human Identification in Fort Worth, Texas, which specializes in forensic DNA analysis.
He cited success in a case older than that of the missing teens -- a 2005 case in which forensic scientists used DNA to identify skeletal remains of a Fort Worth man found 42 years earlier.
Close to 300 bodies missing from the 1970s and 1980s have been identified in the U.S. and Canada in the past 10 years, most from use of DNA or dental records, said Jerry Nance, a forensic unit supervisor with the Center for Missing & Ex ploited Children, founded in 1984.
But older cases are difficult.
"A lot of unidentified bodies were cremated and buried or disposed of that didn't have any samples retained for DNA purposes," Nance said. Even today many medical examiners lack space to store old remains.
In Newark, dozens of detectives conducted hundreds of interviews, distributed thousands of fliers and posters and searched hospital wards for the youths. They reviewed lists of victims in the Atlanta serial killings and the mass suicides in Jonestown, Guyana. They even searched areas pinpointed by two psychics.
Newark Police Detective Rashid Sabur, who has handled the case since 1998 with partner Keith Sheppard, said the DNA samples and details from new interviews could prove valuable.
"We have gathered new information, and we're just continously pursuing it," said Sabur, who is assigned to the city inspector general's office. He declined to elaborate. "This is a case that can be solved. And based on the new information, I think we're getting closer and closer to that end."