Tip about possible body leads to excavation of lot
An excavation at a now-vacant lot on Pittsburgh’s North Side yielded no results Monday after investigators received a tip that a body might have been buried in a home there in the early 1980s.
Pittsburgh police Detective George Satler, who is essentially the police bureau’s one-man cold case squad, said he received a tip a few weeks ago from a woman who said she believed she had seen her father bury a body in their basement in the 1980s.
The woman was 4 years old at the time, and what she saw would have happened around 1981 or 1982, Detective Satler said. He identified her father as Thomas Smith, who died some time ago.
The woman, now in her 40s, told investigators she “recalled her dad dragging something in the house and down into the basement,” he said. “She believes it was a body but didn’t actually see a body. Just by the way he was dragging it — it was heavy.”
He asked her: Could it have been a deer? No. The family dog? No.
Detective Satler said the woman told him that her father spotted her and ordered her to go upstairs. She didn’t, the detective said, but rather continued to watch him pull whatever he was dragging into the basement and into what she described as a coal cellar. She told investigators she saw a shovel and she saw her father digging.
“We don’t know about any missing persons, we don’t know about a body, we don’t know about what he was doing for sure,” he said.
Detective Satler stood by on Monday as a backhoe uprooted dirt and bricks and clay, dumping them into a pile that eventually overtook several small shrubs. He’d occasionally stop the shoveling and hop down into the hole to examine a scrap of fabric or carefully sort through bricks. He found a shoe and a dress, but he stressed that there was no way to know how long they’d been there, who they belonged to, or if they have absolutely any relevance at all.
Investigators found no bones or remains, and digging wrapped up shortly before noon.
But investigators had found the story credible enough to seek permission from the owner of the lot to dig into the land there.
The detective said the woman’s mother confirmed that her daughter came to her when she was a young child and reported what she had seen. Detective Satler said the mother confirmed that she had checked the basement and “confirms that there was possibly digging in the basement.”
Nothing was reported to police at the time, and the family eventually moved to Maine.
Another piece of the puzzle that added credibility to the woman’s story: Smith was the main suspect in a still-unsolved Maine murder in 1989.
On July 1, 32-year-old Pamela Webb was on her way from her home in Winthrop, Maine, to her see her boyfriend in Mason, N.H., according to Maine State Police. Sometime overnight, her blue 1981 Chevy pickup was found along the southbound lane of Interstate 95 near Biddeford, Maine.
The rear passenger-side tire was flat, according to police, and a spare was leaned against the tailgate of the truck. Webb’s dog was in the front of the truck. Authorities also found a turnpike ticket in the car that indicated she had gotten on in Augusta, Maine, at 9:52 p.m.
Police said there were blood stains on the pavement on the passenger side. Webb’s boyfriend reported her missing around 10 a.m. the next day. Her body was found July 18, 1989, about 100 miles away in Franconia, N.H. Her death was from “homicidal violence,” authorities said, though investigators have never specified what that might have entailed.
Detective Satler said he confirmed with authorities in Maine that Smith was “investigated heavily” as the main suspect in Webb’s murder, though he was never charged. He said Smith’s wife confirmed she was questioned multiple times in the 1990s about Webb’s slaying.
“It made [the tip] a little bit more believable that there was a possibility,” he said.
The police bureau’s cold case squad made its first physical arrest late last year when Ondray Upsher was arrested and charged in the 2015 slaying of Jawan Tasker in the Hill District.
The multiyear cold case project was funded by a $50,000 grant from the Department of Justice years earlier. Officials brought in Maurita Bryant, a retired police official who had worked with city and county police, and retired county detective Laurie McKeel. That grant money ran out in 2023. The bureau continues to look for funding avenues.