Murder is always grim. Mass murder far more grim. As bad as you may think things can get, there always seems to be a topper that comes along to shake the human spirit. This is certainly one of those cases if what Essex County prosecutors are alleging happened, really did.
In 1978 five boys who were playing together went missing. Simply missing. Never heard from again. FIVE. It is not uncommon in America for a person to go missing and never be heard from again. Many times it's foul play, in a rare occasion the person simply wants to try to vanish. But to have five boys go missing with no trace is certainly shocking. Now police officials off the record have told the Star-Ledger that the five boys were led into an abandoned house on Camden Street in Newark, locked inside and the house burned to the ground. Police also aren't saying exactly how this case was brought to the point of charging two men but that will no doubt come out in the filings in the case.
The Star-Ledger continues:
The boys, Melvin Pittman and Ernest Taylor, both 17, and Alvin Turner, Randy Johnson, and Michael McDowell, all 16, were last seen on a busy street near West Side Park, where they had played basketball, on Aug. 20, 1978.
We're glad arrests have been made. We'll be happier yet with convictions. Hopefully the remaining members of these boys' family can now find some peace. A lesson here is that cold cases are being solved with far more frequency. Johnny caught up on a cold case he had been following, that of Eileen Adams out of Sylvania Ohio (next to Toledo) who was long thought to be one of serial killer John Norman Collins' victims but was actually murdered by Robert Bowman and who is JUST going to trial for the 1967 murder currently. Despite what some murderers may think, cold case technology is rapidly advancing and one can never truly think they have gotten away with murder ironically until they themselves go to meet their maker.
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