FBI turns heat up on Saxonburg cold case
Traffic stop to tragedy
While there were no eyewitnesses, here is what authorities believe happened on Dec. 4, 1980:
Shortly before 3 p.m. on that Thursday, Chief Adams was on routine patrol in the tiny Butler County borough of Saxonburg. Along a main street, he initiated a stop — most likely for some sort of traffic violation — of a rental car with an out-of-state license plate. The car pulled into the parking lot of the Agway store. Inside the vehicle, authorities say, was Donald Eugene Webb, 49, of New Bedford, Mass. The chief didn’t know it, but the man was a career criminal with a penchant for jewelry heists along the East Coast. He had links to organized crime in New England.
Chief Adams did not radio the station that he was making a stop, nor did he call for backup. He was not wearing his department-issued bulletproof vest.
At the time, Webb was wanted on a federal warrant issued in December 1979 from Albany, N.Y., in connection with an attempted burglary. Likely Webb was afraid of being taken into custody by Chief Adams, and a scuffle ensued. Before it was over, the chief had been shot twice and pistol-whipped about his head and face. Webb also had been injured, most likely having been shot by the chief. Before fleeing the scene, Webb ripped the car radio from the police cruiser.
A homemaker who lives near the Agway heard the moans of the mortally wounded chief. As they waited for help to arrive, he told the woman he didn’t think he would “make it.” He asked her to pray for him. The chief, age 31, died on his way to the hospital, accompanied in the ambulance by a borough police officer.
The chief was buried on Monday, Dec. 8, 1980. The funeral on an ice-cold day drew 450 law enforcement officers. Scores of marked cars lined the country roads approaching St. Mary’s Cemetery in the village of Herman, Summit Township, Butler County. Meanwhile, authorities at the local, state and federal levels were in hot pursuit of the killer.
They homed in quickly on Webb as the suspect, surmising that he had been in Saxonburg to case a burglary target.
Found near the scene of the shooting was a driver’s license in the name of Stanley J. Portas, one of Webb’s aliases. Portas had died in 1958 and had been the husband of Webb’s wife, Lillian Webb. The car in which Webb had fled, a white Mercury Cougar, was found Dec. 21, 1980, parked at a motel in Warwick, R.I. Blood on the vehicle’s floor mat was consistent with Webb’s and indicated he had been shot in the leg.
In information disseminated at the time by the FBI, Webb was described as being “known for his flashy dress, love of dogs and a reputation as a big tipper.”
In May 1981, Webb was added to the FBI’s “10 Most Wanted Fugitives” list.
But, he had vanished.
‘Good vs. evil’
On June 15 of this year, the FBI, Boston Division, issued a renewed plea to the public forhelp in finding Webb, who now would be 85. Along with the plea were never-beforereleased photos of the suspect. “Until we got these photos, all we had was a grainy black-and-white,” said Special Agent Tommy MacDonald, the FBI’s lead investigator in the case, working out of the Portland, Maine, office, a satellite of the Boston bureau.
Agent MacDonald underscores Webb’s notoriety as one of the longest-tenured fugitives ever to appear on the FBI’s most wanted list. He was on the list from May 4, 1981, until March 31, 2007. He was the focus of newspaper articles and TV shows about unsolved crimes. Still, he never has been apprehended and the chief’s death never has been officially solved, though Webb was criminally charged in absentia. Continuing to work the case are the FBI and Pennsylvania state police.
Current Saxonburg Police Chief Joe Beachem, 48, grew up in nearby Slippery Rock and remembers Chief Adams’ killing, though he was only a kid when it happened. He said the lack of resolution in the case is a dark thread in the community’s fabric.
“As a police officer, it’s hard not to see your own family in [Chief Adams’] family and, as a department, we’d like to see them get closure. But, even in the larger community, it nags. There’s a lot of people who live here who would still like answers. It’s a big hole for this town,” he said, mentioning the turnout two years ago for the borough’s 35th anniversary memorial of the chief’s death.
As a law enforcement officer, Chief Beachem understands the nature of cold cases and the difficulty in closing them.
He acknowledged the FBI “has done things over the years to try to spark the case,” including the establishment of a $100,000 reward for anyone providing information that leads to Webb’s arrest or to the location of his remains if he is dead. That reward still stands.
The FBI is reminding the public now that Webb is the only fugitive in the United States wanted for the murder of a police chief.
“The murder of a smalltown police chief is something that resonates with everyone in law enforcement, not just the FBI. Chief Adams was murdered by a career criminal — someone with ties to organized crime. There’s a huge contrast in what [Chief Adams stood for] and what [Webb] stood for. It’s the contrast of good versus evil, right versus wrong,” Agent MacDonald said.
A widow and 2 young sons
When Chief Adams died, he left behind two young sons, 8-month-old Gregory Jr. and 2-year-old Ben, and his wife, Mary Ann, now 64.
The couple had met on a bus on their way to Washington, D.C., where he worked and where Mary Ann’s sister resided.
Raised in Natrona Heights, the chief was a Marine; a graduate of the University of Wisconsin; and, just before he was hired to work in Saxonburg, he was a police officer in Washington, D.C.
Weary of D.C.’s big-city crime — which he had personally experienced when his partner was killed in an oddly coincidental line-ofduty shooting during a traffic stop — he joined the Saxonburg police department in 1973. About four years later, he was elevated to chief. He married Mary Ann on Aug. 21, 1976. Soon after, they began building their family, establishing their home in the borough where he worked. “Life was good,” Mary Ann recalled. Until her life “did a 180-degree turn.” Her husband was slain. Mary Ann said those early years were difficult. “I was living a life I didn’t expect to live,” she said. But, she learned to live as a single mother, raising her sons and coping with the unanswered questions about her husband’s homicide. About a decade after the chief’s death, in 1989, she married James Jones.
“What was a gaping wound was no longer gaping. But, you never really get over it,” she said. Her sons have cycled through several stages of grief as they’ve grown up.
She said she had “basically given up hope” that Webb ever would be arrested. The case didn’t seem just cold, it seemed frozen.
Then, on April 10 of this year, she came home following an outing to a new voicemail message. It was from Agent MacDonald. He wanted a callback.
“It was the first time I had heard from the FBI in a long while,” she said in a telephone interview from a second home in Florida.
The message surprised her, and she called back right away. The agent told her he was working the case hard, that he wanted to see it resolved.
He also told her about the secret room off the closet; that the hidden little room locked from the inside; and that inside the hidden room was a walking cane.
“He told me they found a secret room [in Ms. Webb’s house] and there was a cane in that secret room. Since Greg had shot [Donald Webb] in the leg, it all made sense. They must have built that room for Donald Webb to hide him there,” she said. “It all adds up.”
A Dartmouth building department director, Paul Murphy, confirmed the house where Ms. Webb resides, at 28 Maplecrest Drive, was built in 1964 and she took title in 1997. Some reports indicate she may have lived in the home for a number of years before acquiring ownership. But Mr. Murphy said there are no indications in municipal records that anyone secured a building permit to add on legally to the house.
Marie Sarah Gardner, who has lived across the street from Ms. Webb for several years, said she knows her “in passing,” having seen her come and go from her home. “I have never seen anyone else coming and going from that house. No man,” the neighbor said.
She said she heard of Webb’s notoriety only after the FBI conducted searches of Ms. Webb’s home. One of those searches was about a year ago.
Mary Ann said Agent MacDonald didn’t get into the specifics of why the house was searched, the number of searches, or when they happened. But, she said, he recounted that they don’t believe the secret room was part of the original house.
Agent MacDonald, in an interview with the Post-Gazette, declined to answer any questions regarding the search of Ms. Webb’s home. He said he had been assigned the case about two years ago and that the investigation “has been very active” since. Likewise, he declined to discuss how he obtained the recently released photos of Webb and his wife, taken on a cruise not long before Chief Adams’ killing.
Ms. Webb is now 78. She secured a divorce from Webb several years ago.
A check with both municipal and federal courts officials did not yield any paperwork related to a law enforcement search. Such paperwork may exist but may have been sealed by the courts because the investigation is ongoing.
Mary Ann said Agent MacDonald wanted pictures of her deceased husband and their young family. “They were going to try to get Lillian Webb to talk, appealing to her empathy.”
But, after talking with her family, Mary Ann decided to go a different way.
“My son said, ‘She has no empathy. Why don’t we try to sue her?’ ” Mary Ann recounted. That’s when she called her attorney, Thomas W. King III of Butler.
An immeasurable loss
On June 1 in Butler County Common Pleas Court, on behalf of Mary Ann Jones and her sons, Mr. King filed notice of intent to sue Lillian C. Webb, Donald Eugene Webb and Lillian’s son, Stanley H. Webb, stepson of Donald Webb.
Count I: wrongful death — murder
Count II: civil conspiracy — accessory after the fact
Count III: civil conspiracy — hindering apprehension of a murderer.
They’re seeking damages “in excess of one million dollars.”
Mr. King acknowledged that no criminal charges have been filed against Ms. Webb or her son, Stanley. But, he pointed out the standard of proof varies from the civil system to the criminal system. An example: the O.J. Simpson case, in which Simpson was acquitted of the murders of his estranged wife and her friend. Later, he was found “accountable” for the deaths in civil court. To convict criminally, the evidence must be “beyond a reasonable doubt.” In civil court, the standard is a balancing test that demands “a preponderance of the evidence.”
Mr. King said a foundation of the lawsuit will be his client’s recently received information from the FBI that investigators had found a secret room in Ms. Webb’s house.
“[The FBI] have never told me how they came to be there, but they learned of the existence of a secret room in Mrs. Webb’s house and that the room is accessed through a closet and in that secret room they found a cane. It’s a small room that locks from the inside and it’s obviously something they believe someone used to hide in,” Mr. King recounted.
He said he will argue that the statute of limitations that controls this case moves forward from the date that the FBI advised his client of the existence of the room.
“We take the position that the FBI advising us of the existence of this secret room is our discovery of the conspiracy,” he said.
The case has been assigned to Butler County Judge Michael Yeager. Mr. King said he will ask the judge for permission for “pre-complaint discovery,” which would allow him to subpoena and depose Ms. Webb and her son even before the actual lawsuit is filed.
Mary Ann and her sons have sustained a loss that is “immeasurable,” Mr. King said. While the family seeks money damages for their loss, Mr. King said what they really want is information. “In the end, this is about getting to the truth,” he said.
Agent MacDonald said the agency is operating under the belief that Webb is alive. “There’s always been evidence that Mr. Webb sustained an injury in his confrontation [with Chief Adams], but there is no evidence that Mr. Webb is deceased,” the agent said.
He said his “newly acquired photos” of Webb are “huge. ... A photograph is one of the most important tools in a fugitive investigation.”
The agent said he’s hoping that people in the Pittsburgh area will look closely at the new evidence and think.
He said Webb had spent at least a week in a hotel about 45 minutes from Saxonburg just before the chief’s killing. Some of his associates in crime had been arrested in Williamsport during a burglary of a jewelry store. “There had been a report to Pennsylvania state police that there had been two suspicious men in a [nearby] Sarver jewelry store in the days before the murder of the chief. [The theory] based on the pattern is that he went into Saxonburg to case potential burglary locations,” the agent said.
Looking for leads
Ms. Webb was reached by phone but declined to comment for this story. Her son, Stanley, could not be reached. An interview request by email to one of Stanley’s businesses was not answered.
Ms. Webb has hired attorney John F. Cicilline of Providence, R.I., who had represented New England mafia boss Raymond L.S. Patriarca. Agent MacDonald said Webb had connections with the Patriarca crime family in Providence. Mr. Cicilline did not return phone calls to his office.
Webb stands formally charged in Pennsylvania with first-degree murder. A federal arrest warrant was issued for him, charging unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, on Dec. 31, 1980.
The FBI describes Webb as follows:
He is a white male with brown eyes. At the time he fled, he was 5 feet, 9 inches tall and weighed about 165 pounds. He had graying brown hair. He may have a small scar on his right cheek and his right forearm. He may have the following tattoos: “DON” on the web of his right hand and “ANN” on his chest.
His aliases include: A.D. Baker, Donald Eugene Perkins, Donald Eugene Pierce, John S. Portas, Stanley John Portas, Bev Webb, Eugene Bevlin Webb, Eugene Donald Webb and Stanley Webb.
Anyone with information is asked to contact the FBI at 1-800-225-5324. Tips also can be submitted electronically at tips.fbi.gov.