wnbc.com
More




30 Years Later -- 5 Teens Still Missing
Community Remembers Boys Who Vanished

POSTED: 10:41 am EDT August 17, 2008
UPDATED: 3:28 pm EDT August 17, 2008


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 Michael McDowell, one of the missing boys.

"You can't make five people disappear by yourself," said Michael's aunt Helen Simmons. "So there are other people involved and when there are other people involved ... somebody would talk ...but nobody has."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.

"He had a conversation with my mom, and I came back outside and saw my brother get in a truck with Lee Evans -- a green pick up truck -- and drive off," said Terry Lawson, Michael's sister. "We never saw him again."

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.

"For sure we know they haven't run away," said Lawson. "Something happened to them, and 30 years later we know it's not good ... else we would know something."

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.

"They just weren't considered important enough to go after," said Simmons. "I just want to know what happened."

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.wnbc.com/print/17213231/detail.html

http://z10.invisionfree.com/usedtobedoe/in...pic=36307&st=0&

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."

Still Waiting Still Praying
Posted by The Star-Ledger August 19, 2008 3:08PM
Categories: News
The Star Ledger Archive

COPYRIGHT © The Star Ledger 2003

Date: 2003/08/21


Newark struggles to keep alive the memory of 5 missing teens

By BARRY CARTER AND RUSSELL BEN-ALI
STAR-LEDGER STAFF

Almost daily, Lillie Williams looks at the photograph of her teenage son and then asks God for a sign to let her know he's all right.

She did it again yesterday, 25 years to the day after her son, Melvin Pittman, and four teenage friends disappeared from a Newark street corner in what investigators call one of the most baffling missing persons cases in state history.

Williams' prayers have yet to be answered, but she finds some comfort in the fact that others still care.

Scores of community residents, as well as a handful of activists bent on keeping the case alive, are expected to turn up tonight at the Clinton Avenue Presbyterian Church in Newark for a memorial service for the missing teens. "We intend to keep this up until someone comes forward and tells what happened," said William Manns Jr., a Newark resident who helped plan the memorial. "This is our town and no one knows what happened? It's insane."

Dozens of detectives have worked on the case over the years with little result. One of the few promising leads came soon after the disappearance, when Newark police traced an anonymous call - claiming the boys were in jail in Washington, D.C. - back to the nation's capital.

The caller offered to put up $150 for the boys' bail, but police quickly dismissed the call as a prank after checks of jails in that area turned up nothing.

"It has been one of the strangest missing person cases," said Everett Hairston, a retired Newark detective assigned to the investigation off and on from 1978 to 1995. "You just wish there was some way or another the families could get some kind of closure." Police and volunteers distributed 55,000 fliers and 500 posters of the missing teens throughout New Jersey and conducted hundreds of interviews. They searched hospital mental wards, reviewed lists of victims in the Atlanta serial killings and the Jonestown, Guyana, mass suicides and even dug up areas pinpointed by two psychics who offered tips.

Despite these efforts, the boys - Pittman, 17, Alvin Turner, 16, Randy Johnson, 16, Ernest Taylor, 17, all from the same Newark neighborhood, and Michael McDowell, 16, who'd recently moved to East Orange - were never heard from again.

The teens had gathered at Newark's West Side Park on that warm August day to play basketball. One of the men they played with - Lee Evans, a 25-year-old painter and carpenter - later hired them to help unload boxes from his truck.

From there, the trail goes cold.

Evans, who passed at least one lie detector test, said he dropped them off in their Clinton Avenue neighborhood. He was eliminated as a suspect, police said.

Some of the original detectives have retired or been reassigned; one has died. But Newark police have never closed the case, officials said, and recently assigned it to another detective in the homicide cold case section.

But few reliable tips have emerged - a fact that has troubled relatives, investigators and community residents over the years.

"It's still difficult to talk about," Louis Taylor said yesterday as he sat on his Leslie Street porch, pointing to a vacant lot where Ernest Taylor, the youngest of his 10 children, often played football.

"It's still tough, not knowing where he's at," added Rogers Taylor, Ernest's brother, who traveled from Baltimore for the memorial.

Lillie Williams said the passage of 25 years has done little to ease her pain and when the anniversary of her son's disappearance rolls around, it brings back old memories.

"I wake up on that day and I'm upset," Williams said. "I just can't take too much more. You don't know no more that day than you do today. It just puts you in a trance."

Manns, a Newark attorney, said he felt compelled to act out of concern that the boys had been forgotten.

He began to consult with other activists and residents in an attempt to keep the memory of the boys alive. They organized this evening's service at the church, to be held at 761 Clinton Ave. at 6 p.m.

Dennis Newkirk, another activist involved in the memorial, said he hopes the service teaches young people the importance of letting parents know where they'll be and how to get in touch with them at all times.

"We don't want to keep adding kids to this list," Newkirk said.

Aside from organizing the memorial, activists have contacted "America's Most Wanted," the television show that deals with cold cases, in hopes that it might jump-start the investigation. Others have contacted newspapers and television stations to spur media interest in the boys.

"They haven't had the opportunity for someone to talk about the goodness of their life," said Allen Patterson, who has been active in the efforts. "They didn't have the chance to have a preacher or bishop eulogize their life."

Floria McDowell, Alvin Turner's mother, s said she will attend the service. But like some of the other boys' parents, she said she's resigned herself to the possibility that she may never know what happened to her son.

"It left me heartbroken for a long time," McDowell said. "I've had countless crying spells, I took medication, I've learned to live with it. I think about it every day, but I just put it in the hands of the good Lord and ask him to take care of it."


http://blog.nj.com/ledgerarchives/2008/08/...ll_praying.html

Baffling Case of 5 Missing Teens Still Unsolved
Posted by Steven T. Walker/The Star-Ledger August 19, 2008 3:04PM
Categories: News
The Star-Ledger Archive

COPYRIGHT © The Star-Ledger 1991

Date: 1991/09/29 Sunday


13 YEARS LATER, THE DISAPPEARANCE CONTINUES TO INTRIGUE NEWARK COPS

Five high school-aged boys disappear without a trace in the twilight of a summer's day 13 years ago and are never heard from again. The youths are declared ''missing'' and despite countless efforts to find some trace of the five, none is ever located. Newark police point to the case as the single most intriguing mystery in city history and parents of the missing youths continue to pray for the safe return of their children. Alvin Turner, 16, of Clinton Avenue, Melvin Pittman, 17, of Beverly Street, Randy Johnson, 16, of Hawthorne Avenue, Ernest Taylor, 17, of Lesley Street and Michael McDowell, 16, of Main Street, East Orange, were reported missing on Aug. 20, 1978.

According to reports, the five youths were last seen in the back of a pickup truck of mutual friend Lee Evans. Evans, also known as ''Big Man,'' had asked the youngsters to help him move some boxes shortly after the group played several games of basketball at West Side Park. It was later learned that the moving plans were changed and at least three of the young men were said to have returned home for dinner. Shortly before 9 p.m., however, two of the youths, one thought to be McDowell, were seen on the truck again. Police reported that McDowell returned home between 9:30 and 10 p.m., changed his clothes and took a drink of water before returning to the pickup truck. McDowell's mother said she saw, but could not identify, the other person on the back of the truck as her son left. The truck was seen after 10 p.m. at Fabyan Place and Clinton Avenue. It is the last time police have any record of the boys being seen. Newark police Detective Everett L. Hairston, a member of the department's Community and Youth Service Unit, said the baffling case has been a part of his life since he began working on it shortly after the youngsters disappeared. Hairston said police have come up empty on hundreds of leads, and he noted Evans passed a lie detector test. He said police have searched hospital mental wards, youth houses and circuses; consulted psychics and Ouija board operators; talked to political groups, and checked prisons, the lists of people who committed mass suicide in Guyana in 1978, victims found murdered in Atlanta in 1981 and the list of alleged victims involved in a mass murder case in Milwaukee this year - all to no avail. In fact, Hairston said the only thing that has changed over the years is the reference to the five as ''youths,'' since if alive, they would be about 29 and 30 years of age. Thumbing through his extensive case file, which he refers to as ''the Bible,'' Hairston, the only detective on the case, said he has become so consumed with the disappearance that he often reads the material collected in the file ''just to make sure I didn't miss anything.'' ''This is the most intriguing case I've ever worked on,'' Hairston said. ''It's not often that you find absolutely no physical evidence regarding a disappearance. ''In this case, all the boys did everything together, so you know - because there was a group of them - they probably weren't overcome. But, you would have thought one of them would have called home.'' He said for the first few years, the most concrete lead in the case involved an unidentified caller who said the five had been arrested by authorities for trying to steal a truck in Washington, D.C. Hairston said police checked with officials in that area and found no record of the missing youths. They traced the call to the National Visitors Center in D.C., but never could determine who made the call. Hairston said the case was reopened in 1986 when a Irvington psychic believed that the bodies could be found at a garbage site south of Newark International Airport. Police excavated an abandoned oil tank in a desolate area south of the airport, but found nothing. Since 1986, Hairston said, the tips have been few and far between, with the last one coming from a prisoner in North Carolina, who advised police to search area prisons. Hairston said he checked the prisons and still found no trace of the five. ''In the past few years, things have really slowed down,'' he said. ''I check the NCIC (National Crime Information Center) and still talk with some of the kids that we know were around their age, but no one knows anything.'' Hairston said he even recently considered trying to get the mystery aired on television to help get the case solved. ''I know there is an answer to this mystery and one day this case will be solved. It has to be,'' the 20-year police veteran said. Rebecca Taylor, the mother of Ernest Taylor, and Lillie Williams, mother of Melvin Pittman, both said they have learned to live with the reality of not knowing what happened to their sons. Taylor said Ernest's 30th birthday was last month, but she did not hold any ceremony, just thought about the whole ordeal. Taylor said she was sleeping the night Ernest said he was ''going out with the boys,'' and rarely does a day go by without her thinking about her youngest son. ''I didn't know what happened to Ernest because when he left the house he was walking,'' she said. ''I just can't understand the whole thing. You'd think there would have been some news, but I haven't heard anything.'' Taylor said she remembers when residents of the Clinton Hill section circulated fliers throughout the area and neighboring states, offering a $1,500 reward for any information on the whereabouts of the teens. A Montclair-based organization, called the Crisis Coalition, organized search parties and also circulated fliers throughout the state. Taylor said such efforts ''died down'' after the first five years of the case and police information has been limited. She said the five families have even lost touch with each other. ''When this all first started, we did become close, but I haven't heard from anyone in at least two years,'' Taylor said. ''The police don't call as much as they used to either. ''They usually call around the (date) the disappearance occurred, but not much more. There just isn't any news.'' Williams said she used to call the police on a regular basis when her son Melvin first disappeared, but has since ''stopped bothering them.'' She said the lack of information about the case is what has preserved her faith that Melvin may still be alive. Williams said one popular theory has the five moving to Washington, D.C. and joining an underground religious sect, but she has no proof. ''Anything is possible today,'' Williams said. ''People change their names, change their Social Security numbers, so anything is possible. ''I keep hoping that one day he'll just walk in through the front door,'' she said. However, Williams said she would not be surprised by ''bad news.'' The family went through a period of depression after the incident occurred, but she said Melvin's brothers and sisters have learned to live with his absence of 13 years. ''I would welcome any news at this point,'' she said. ''Even bad news, if it was fact, would at least let me know what happened
http://blog.nj.com/ledgerarchives/2008/08/...issing_tee.html

http://blog.nj.com/ledgerarchives/2008/08/missing.pdf

After 18 Years, Newark Searches for 5 Boys Who Vanished

By DAVID STOUT
Published: May 17, 1996

On a hot Sunday afternoon in August 1978, five teen-age boys played basketball on a court in south Newark, went home for dinner and went out again. The five, all good friends 16 or 17 years old, have been missing ever since, as though swallowed by the sultry night.

Randy Johnson spent that Sunday, Aug. 20, visiting friends before playing basketball. He was seen walking down Fabyan Place in Newark around 7 P.M. Then he vanished.

Around dusk, Melvin Pittman said goodbye to his mother and left his home on Beverly Street. A short time later, a friend saw him walking by an ice cream parlor on Fabyan Place. He was never seen again.

Ernest Taylor, Michael McDowell and Alvin Turner were seen riding down Clinton Avenue in the back of a pickup truck owned by an Irvington, N.J., contractor who had befriended all five boys.

At 11 P.M., the three who had been in the truck were spotted near Fabyan Place. They were never seen thereafter.

Now, spurred by a Nutley, N.J., woman who has been described as a psychic, the Newark police are renewing their efforts in one of their most baffling cases in memory. They have talked to relatives first interviewed 18 years ago, and this week they dug in a field near Newark International Airport.

The woman, Dorothy Allison, said in a telephone interview yesterday that she visited the field twice in April with two detectives who were assigned to the case in recent months and decided to take a fresh look at everything. The field is a wild five-acre tract just west of the New Jersey Turnpike where Interstate 78 and Route 22 run parallel.

"I see teeth in the ground," Ms. Allison said, describing a vision. "I feel that the boys were burned after being killed."

Why does she think that? "I don't know. Why did I say that about the teeth? I have to go by my feeling." Letting her feeling guide her words for a moment, she went on: "I see a piece of clothing, like a plaid shirt or something, I see. It's like a rag."

Ms. Allison has worked with police around the country on homicide and missing-person cases. The Newark police take her seriously enough that on Tuesday and Wednesday several officers and several dogs poked through the field's bug-infested high grass near an industrial area.

They mapped out 10 sites to excavate, dug in three, then suspended digging so the two detectives, Armandin Tahaney and Angel Ramos, could conduct new interviews and go over the case history.

It is a history of dead ends.

The five teen-agers were all strong and athletic, familiar with the Newark streets, unlikely prey for muggers. None had been in serious trouble, although Michael McDowell had a poor attendance record at school and had a juvenile record for fighting. He also had a part-time job.

The other four lived within five blocks of one another and went to Weequahic High School, where they were average students.

In the weeks after the five boys vanished, investigators interviewed hundreds of people. They administered dozens of polygraph tests. They sent missing-persons fliers nationwide. They dragged rivers, looked in abandoned buildings, questioned prostitutes and drug dealers.

Nothing.

What the original investigators did not do, for reasons that are not clear these many years later, is search the field where Ms. Allison told the police almost 18 years ago she thought the boys' bodies were buried.

Just after the disappearance, the parents of the boys voiced suspicions about the Irvington contractor who had befriended them and was seen with three of the five the night they vanished. But investigators at the time said the contractor passed several polygraph tests.

A detective and police spokesman, Danny Collins, would not say whether the contractor was a suspect, or whether there were any suspects. "We're exploring all possibilities," Mr. Collins said.

Those possibilities now include digging in a field where, according to workers in nearby plants, stray dogs roam and howl in the night. Yesterday, Mr. Collins dismissed as untrue a report that teeth and a jawbone had been found.

Nevertheless, Ms. Allison said she believed the field was a place of death. She said that when she began going over the case yet again with the new detectives, Ms. Tahaney and Mr. Ramos, "My heart broke."

Nutley's Police Chief, Robert DeLitta, said yesterday that Ms. Allison had helped his department over the years, as she had other agencies.

"Cops are skeptics," he said, "but the information she gave us was accurate." In 1968, Ms. Allison was credited with leading the police to the body of a missing boy who was found in a drainpipe.

On Wednesday, the Newark police gave Ms. Allison, who is 71, a plaque for her efforts in the case of the five missing boys. But she said yesterday it brought her little joy. "I want to find the boys," she said. "Whatever's left of them."

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...756C0A960958260

Our Towns; 20 Years Later, Still No Trace Of Missing 5
E-MAIL
Print
Reprints
ShareClose
LinkedinDiggFacebookMixxMy SpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalinkBy EVELYN NIEVES
Published: August 16, 1998
THE five boys played basketball, then went home for dinner. It was mid-August, the beginning of the end of summer, and they had played pickup ball for hours, unfazed by the knock-down heat of the court at West Side Park. Later, people would remark that the youths played as if they knew the day would be their last.

The police have said that nothing about that day -- a Sunday -- was much different from the one before it, or the one before that. It was Aug. 20, 1978: hot and airless on the streets of Newark. Five high school kids played hoops, went home, went back out. It was a typical day for typical city teen-agers. Nothing detectives have found shows that the five made plans to disappear that night.

Still, no one can be sure. Twenty years later, almost as little is known about Newark's biggest unsolved case, the sudden disappearance of five healthy teen-agers, as on the day it happened. They played basketball. They ate. They vanished.

Officially, it is still a missing persons case. No bodies or body parts have turned up. Alvin Turner, Randy Johnson and Michael McDowell, who were 16, and Melvin Pittman and Ernest Taylor, who were 17, may still be alive somewhere, pushing 40. But the police doubt it. None of them have ever been spotted. None have ever been heard from. Their Social Security numbers have not been used since they disappeared.

The police have followed scant leads. No doubt, a lack of publicity has not helped. This extraordinary case received no headline-grabbing stories, no televised interviews with family and friends, no mention on milk cartons. There was no national campaign calling for information or sightings. The five black youths never entered the public consciousness the way some white, middle-class missing children do.

If the disappearance happened now, perhaps the world would know. Then, there were no 24-hour news channels with bottomless appetites for headlines, no 90-minute local reports, no World Wide Web. The public was not media-savvy, ready to alert journalists at the first whiff of trouble, the way it is now. All three New York City daily newspapers were on strike. And if they had been publishing, it probably would have made no difference. The local newspaper, The Star-Ledger of Newark, did not have a story on the case at the time, either. No one knew but the families and friends of the missing boys and the police.

Apparently, at the time, the police believed that the only explanation for the disappearance of five youths was that they had just run away. But the families said all along that the boys were not the sort to do that. Michael McDowell, who lived in East Orange, got into trouble once for a fistfight. The other four, sophomores and juniors at Weequahic High School, had been in no trouble at all.

On the evening they vanished, they got a ride home from the park in a pickup truck from a contractor they knew as ''Big Man'' who sometimes hired them to do odd jobs. After dinner, Michael was seen in the back of the truck with another youth. The contractor, Lee Anthony Evans, was questioned by the police, given lie detector tests and cleared.

Every few years, often near the anniversary of the disappearance, the Newark Police Department reviews the case. Two years ago, two detectives followed a tip that a psychic, Dorothy Allison, had given the police 17 years earlier about where to find the five bodies. She took them to a lot near Newark International Airport, where she said the burned bodies of the youths had been buried. But after a few days of digging, the police suspended the investigation.

Then, two months later, another psychic came up empty at another spot. The police have also tried, at various times, contacting Ouija board readers, political and religious fringe groups and prisons.

The Police Department's cold-case squad has the file now. But a police spokesman, Sgt. Derek Glenn, could not say whether the 20-year-old mystery was a cold cold case, or an active one. After eight or nine phone calls over three days requesting interviews with detectives or any information on the case, the requests were denied. Sergeant Glenn said he did not know that there was anything new to say.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...75BC0A96E958260

http://wcbstv.com/seenat11/clinton.avenue.....2.1015230.html
May 21, 2009 6:02 am US/Eastern
Uncovering Mystery Of The 'Clinton Avenue Five'
Family Members Of 5 Boys Who Disappeared 31 Years Ago Have Renewed Optimism Cops Will Crack Case Reporting
John Slattery NEWARK (CBS) ¯
Click to enlarge
Authorities believe they are finally closing in on solving a 30-year-old cold case in Newark that resulted in the unsolved disappearance of five teenagers.
CBS


Police are hopeful they can crack a major cold case that's gone unsolved for more than 30 years. Five teenagers vanished on a summer day in 1978. And now, as CBS 2 HD has learned, the family members of those missing have new reason for hope.

Over the last 30 years, Helen Simmons has saved every newspaper clipping she saw on the case, storing them in rolls of protective plastic. They're clips that tell of a mystery never solved, that claimed her nephew, Michael McDowell.

"After 30 years, you're no longer grieving, but you're wondering," Simmons said.

Also wondering is Lillie Williams, who has never gotten over the disappearance of her son, Melvin Pittman.

"All these years, I'm just waiting to get an answer about whether he's dead or alive. I'm quite sure he's not alive," Williams said.

It was on a hot summer day in August 1978 when five teens, 16 and 17, who'd never been in trouble, disappeared from their own neighborhood. They came to be known as the "Clinton Avenue Five."

"It's probably the most sensational case this city had in the past, in its history," Newark Police Director Garry McCarthy said.

Suddenly gone were Randy Johnson, Michael McDowell, Melvin Pittman, Ernest Taylor and Alvin Turner. That day, the five had played basketball at a local park. Some of them then went to their homes to change their clothes before meeting up again at Clinton Avenue and Fabyan Place. They were to help a local contractor, Lee Evans, who was moving. Evans claims they helped him load up his truck with boxes and deliver them at his new house.

Evans said he then brought the five back here where he'd picked them up. But police say no one ever saw them return. They vanished.

"There's never been any evidence, no remains recovered, and at this point, this case is still being carried as five missing kids," McCarthy said.

Evans said he was given a polygraph test, which he passed.

"Yeah, I passed it," he said.

But as for the details of that day, Evans did not want to talk on camera.

"No, I just don't want to talk in public," Evans said.

None of the five had fingerprint records. Their social security numbers were never used.

"Thirty years later, we're still working on that case. Our cold case unit is working on that case as we speak," McCarthy said.

Not only are they working on it, but Newark Mayor Cory Booker said this cold case is heating up.

"We've made a lot of strides. We found a lot of solid evidence and we're engaged in it right now," Booker said.

Police will not say what advances they've made, whether its bodies they've located or suspects about to be charged. Whatever it is, the families are suddenly hopeful for a resolution.

"They've just given us indications that they are close; that they do have leads; that they're following up on leads," Simmons said.

Detectives have recently met with the families. Angela Williams is Melvin Pittman's sister.

"You think they will get an arrest? "I know they will [make an arrest," Angela Williams said.

Whatever the news, and whenever it breaks, the families are not expecting good news.

"They were murdered, pure and simple," Simmons said.

But it now seems the final chapter of this long-running mystery may soon be written.

The search for the five missing teens prompted investigators to search far and wide. They reviewed lists of victims in the Atlanta serial killings in the late 1970s and early '80s; the mass suicides in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978; and the Chicago serial killings of John Wayne Gacy.

The missing five were not among them.