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Beth Barr

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Unsolved Cases: Barbara Lewis' Body Found a Mile from Home in Churchill

The murder of the 30-year-old secretary from Penn Hills has never been solved.

Long Road in Penn Hills gets a fair amount of morning rush hour traffic—school and Port Authority buses, along with commuters leaving their homes and heading for their jobs in Pittsburgh. Weekday mornings, at the end of Long Road, cars often form a line waiting to make a left hand turn at the Churchill Valley Country Club onto Beulah Road. As they drive up the hill, they pass the Blackridge Civic Association clubhouse and then, at the top of the hill, intersect with the Parkway East or Penn Avenue toward Wilkinsburg. When Barbara Jean Lewis graduated from Penn Hills High School in 1964, she had her eye on a secretarial career. Her dream to enter the business world came true. She was a secretary at the downtown Pittsburgh offices of …

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Wilkinsburg Kidnap-Murder Case Still Brings New Tips

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 …

Monday, November 28, 2011

Murder Cold Case 'Not A Lost Cause'

The ‘woman at the bus stop’ tells her story about the day a Wilkinsburg schoolgirl disappeared on Thanksgiving eve 1977.

Editor’s note: 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 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 …

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