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Missing Person - Monongalia County

The West Virginia State Police is assisting the Pennsylvania State Police with the investigation of a missing Pennsylvania man that, according to family members, has been missing since October 12, 2001. The missing man has been identified as thirty year old Jerry Lee Cushey.
The West Virginia State Police, at the request of the family, has conducted a total of four ground searches and four water searches, including one water search on this date. The searches have been concentrated around the Cheat Lake area in Monongalia County. Today there was a total of thrty-seven members representing Granville Volunteer Fire Department, Barbour County Search and Rescue Tactical Team, Marion County Dive Rescue Team, Mountaineer Area Rescue Group, and the Cheat Lake Volunteer Fire Department, assisting in the search. To date, the searches have produced no conclusive evidence.
The West Virginia State Police is requesting that anyone with any information regarding the disappearance of Jerry Lee Cushey contact the West Virginia State Police Morgantown Detachment at 304-285-3200, or the Pennsylvania State Police Belle Vernon Barracks at 724-929-6262.

http://www.wvstatepolice.com/cushey.htm

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/c/cushey_jerry.html

Jerry Lee Cushey Jr.


Above Images: Cushey, circa 2001


Vital Statistics at Time of Disappearance

Missing Since: October 12, 2001 from Monongahela, Pennsylvania
Classification: Endangered Missing
Date Of Birth: December 23, 1971
Age: 29 years old
Height and Weight: 5'9, 170 pounds
Distinguishing Characteristics: Caucasian male. Black hair, brown eyes. Cushey had a moustache and goatee at the time of his October 2001 disappearance. He has a self-designed tattoo of a jester on his left shoulder. Cushey has two additional tattoos on his back and on his right calf.
Clothing/Jewelry Description: Possibly an Adidas baseball cap.


Details of Disappearance

Cushey resided in Union Township, Pennsylvania in 2001. He was employed at Forward Construction Inc. at the time. Cushey was staying with a friend, Christopher Myers, at an apartment above Totally Tattoos, a business owned by Myers in the 200 block of Second Street in Monongahela, Pennsylvania in October 2001. Myers and Cushey had not seen each other for ten years before they had a chance encounter the week before Cushey vanished and Myers invited him to stay at his apartment. Cushey was last seen inside Totally Tattoos on October 12, 2001. He did not go to work that day because he planned to some work on the apartment with Myers. He did pick up his paycheck from the construction company that employed him, cashed it, and made plans to meet friends at a bar that evening. Cushey never arrived at the bar and has never been heard from again.
Myers's vehicle was discovered over an embankment on Morgan Run Road in Morgantown, West Virginia, in the Cheat Lake area, on October 16, four days after Cushey disappeared. A stick had been placed on the van's gas pedal and the vehicle crashed into a tree at the bottom of a 30-foot embankment; the tree kept it from running into a stream. There was no sign of Cushey or anyone else at the scene. After the vehicle was found, Myers reported that Cushey had stolen it, and $1,500, from him. Authorities returned the van to Myers shortly afterwards.

Cushey had borrowed his father's Jeep Wrangler prior to his disappearance. At 11:00 p.m. the day after he vanished, the vehicle was found parked outside Cushey's father's residence. It had been wiped clean of fingerprints. Cushey's father reported seeing a man, not Cushey, park the car in his yard. Myers later admitted to having left the Jeep there, and was charged with obstructing the administration of law as a result. Cushey's sister reported that someone called her claiming to be Cushey and stating he was in Oklahoma and safe, but she did not believe the caller was actually her brother.

Authorities searched a portion of Cheat Lake in West Virginia in November 2001 in an attempt to locate evidence pertaining to Cushey's case. They found a hat that Cushey's family members believe was his, but nothing else. In 2006, investigators searched the Mon River, which is a block and a half from where Cushey was last seen, and some items were located, but additional information about the search was not released. Cushey's family hired a psychic, who said that her visions of Cushey's whereabouts were connected to the lake. His relatives suspect that foul play was involved in his case. They said that it is uncharacteristic of Cushey to leave without warning.

During the search for him, Cushey's sister received a threatening phone call from an anonymous person who warned them to "back off" and stop searching for Cushey or "something would happen." The individual has never been identified. Cushey's parents also got telephone calls from a man saying he was their son, and giving various reasons as to why he had left of his own accord. The man was not Cushey and Myers was later charged with impersonating him over the phone. He stated he felt the police were targeting him (he has a juvenile criminal record for burglary) and he moved Cushey's father's car and made the telephone calls in an effort to cast suspicion elsewhere.

Cushey's case remains unsolved.



Investigating Agency
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact:
Uniontown City, Pennsylvania Police Department
724-348-6262
OR
Pennsylvania State Police
Morgantown Station
215-285-3200



Source Information
Rino Kids Online
The Dominion Post
The Valley Independent
KDKA-TV News
Pennsylvania Missing Persons
The Post Gazette



Updated 3 times since October 12, 2004.

Last updated January 26, 2007; clothing/jewelry description added, details of disappearance updated.

Charley Project Home

Still missing, 4 years later

By Chris Buckley
VALLEY INDEPENDENT
Saturday, October 15, 2005


MONONGAHELA -- Sonya Helmantoler stills talks to her brother. She sees a vision of him, though it's been four years since he disappeared.

"People tell me to get over it," Helmantoler said. "I try to put it behind me, but my brother won't let me."

Her mother, Ilona Boyd, has set her sights more modestly.

"We still need a body," she said grimly. "That would bring some closure."

It was early October 2001 when Jerry Lee Cushey Jr., then 30, had a chance encounter with Chris Myers, whom he had worked for 10 years earlier. Myers invited him to stay at an apartment above his shop, Totally Tattoos, in the 200 block of Second Street, Monongahela. About a week later, Cushey was seen for the last time outside that shop.

Union Township police first investigated the case because that was where Cushey had lived with his father for years. In February 2002, the case was turned over to state police in Belle Vernon.

Several days after Cushey disappeared, police said a van similar to the one he was seen driving was found at the base of a 30-foot embankment in the Cheat Lake area of West Virginia. Police said a tow truck driver found a twig holding down the gas pedal when he pulled the van from the hillside.

Several days later, Myers reported his van stolen, and told police he suspected Cushey of stealing the vehicle.

Cushey was reportedly driving his father's Jeep when he disappeared. The Jeep was found at 11 p.m. the next day parked outside his father's Union Township home.

Helmantoler said that someone trying to imitate Cushey's voice told Jerry Cushey Sr. that he was OK and living out west.

His family has resigned itself to the belief that Cushey is gone and that he was murdered.

Boyd said the family has had no support from the community, but has heard plenty of rumors and the odd telephone call.

In the beginning, Helmantoler received an anonymous telephone call with a message: "Back off or things will happen."

In recent weeks, Boyd said a rumor spread through the Monongahela area that Cushey's body was found in an apartment in town. It was unfounded, she said.

"We've had to endure a number of rumors," Boyd said. "It gives you hope -- then brings you down."

With no breaks in the case, the family has sought the help of four psychics. Each told the family Cushey was murdered, the victim of a blow to the head, and implied that his body was dumped in a body of water.

Helmantoler was a guest on "The Montell Williams Show," where she met psychic Sylvia Brown.

Though four years have passed, the family has not lost its resolve to find closure. And, Helmantoler said, neither has her brother.

Recently, her brother's vision told her not to give up and gave her a clue as to his whereabouts.

"I told him to send me a sign -- to send me three dimes," Helmantoler said. "I told my mom 'You've heard of pennies from Heaven -- I told him I want dimes.'

"I reached in my pocket and found a dime. Then I bought something and received a dime in change. Later that night, my husband gave me a dime he found."

Woman hopes to find clues about son
Sunday, October 16, 2005

By Joe Smydo, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Four years after her son disappeared, a New Eagle woman is making a new appeal for information about him.

Jerry Cushey Jr., of Monongahela, last spoke with a family member Oct. 12, 2001. At the time, he was 29.

His mother, Ilona Boyd, of New Eagle, said a state police investigation and the family's own inquiries, including use of psychics, hadn't panned out.

If people weren't comfortable coming forward with information four years ago, Mrs. Boyd said, perhaps they would be willing to do so now. She said she hoped her appeal reached people who have returned to the area after some years away.

"I just want to plead for help," she said, asking those with information to call her at 724-258-5895.

On the day family members said he disappeared, Mr. Cushey spoke with his sister, Gina Thorn. He had taken the day off from work to fix up a Monongahela apartment he and another man recently had rented. He cashed his paycheck at a Monongahela beer distributor, stopped at a convenience store in town and made plans to spend time with friends that night.

He never met his friends.

Mr. Cushey's new roommate later reported Mr. Cushey had stolen his van and $1,500. The van was discovered Oct. 16, over an embankment near Cheat Lake in West Virginia, but no trace of Mr. Cushey was found.

Acting on a tip, Mrs. Boyd said, police took search dogs to a farm near California about three months ago. They found nothing. Mrs. Boyd said a rumor Labor Day weekend that her son's body had been found behind a wall in the Monongahela apartment was untrue.

Diver Search Mon For Man Missing For 4 Years
Jun 24, 2006
David Highfield

(KDKA) MONONGAHELA Divers were in the Monongahela River Saturday looking for clues into the disappearance of a man more than four years ago.

Jerry Cushey disappeared from the streets of Monongahela, Washington County.

Now, his family is praying that they may be getting closer to some answers.

KDKA's David Highfield reports that the Mon River could hold clues into Cushey's disappearance.

His family, who watched divers search, is holding out hope.

"It's just been a hard five years," said Cushey's sister Gina Thorn. "We just want, as a family, to have some closure and bring him so we can have someplace to go visit him."

Cushey was last seen on 2nd street in Monongahela heading to a club

He was only 1.5 blocks from river at the time but the river has never been searched until now.

"We have been pushing that we wanted a river search here," said Sonya Helmantoler, Cushey's sister. "We have dealt with psychics and they have been telling us there is something down here in the river."

The head of the dive team tells KDKA that they are here at the request of state police but he won't say what prompted the search at this time.

He also won't say what divers may have discovered.

"All I can comment on is that we've recovered some items and that were going to be turning them over to state police investigators," said Sam Woncheck of Mon Valley Divers.

When describing her brother, Cushey's sister now speaks in past tense.

"He had a big heart. He was a wonderful person," said Helmantoler.

She just hopes that after years of searching for answers, she can fulfill a promise to her family.

"I promised them that I would find him and thats what I'm set out to do," Helmantoler said.

There have been some strange things happen in this case.

Cushey's car was delivered anonymously to his dad's house one night.

Another time the family received a phone call telling them to "back off."

Now, they are hoping whatever was found in the river will provide some answers.

http://kdka.com/topstories/local_story_175224254.html

http://www.pittsburgpostgazette.com/neigh_...629wacover2.asp

What happened to Jerry?
Family fears for wistful wanderer, poet and 'follower' mysteriously missing

Sunday, June 29, 2003

By Joe Smydo, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The bedroom at his dad's place is just as Jerry Cushey Jr. left it 1 1/2 years ago. The Ford Thunderbird sits outside the Union house, waiting for Cushey to complete the repairs.

Where is he?

You're in my heart.

You will always be with me.

When moments are dark

Thoughts of you lift me.

With insight sharpened by pain, Sonya Helmantoler can see the sadness in her brother's poetry. There's uncertainty, too, about his life and place in the world.

Cushey wrote a few lines whenever the inspiration struck him, using whatever paper was at hand. He didn't keep a book of his poetry. He hadn't been that structured, that disciplined, about anything.

At 29, Cushey hadn't settled down. He bounced from job to job and from bed to bed, alternately staying with his father, mother and friends. He had no road-worthy car of his own. He lived a teen-ager's life -- full of promise but without shape -- and acknowledged as much in one of his poems.

As I peer into the mirror

I question what I see.

For is this a man

With years of battles won

Or a lonesome, scared child

Fearing what's yet to come?

Staring deep and harder

This image I see

The child, the man

Are one in me.

About 10:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 13, 2001, Jerry Cushey Sr. saw the dance of headlights and looked out the window of his house, three-quarters of a mile up winding, pothole-scarred Nasal Lane. He saw a shadowy figure, not Jerry Jr., moving away from the Jeep Wrangler his son had borrowed from him.

Strange, the elder Cushey thought.

"He called Jerry's cell phone. There was no answer," said Jerry Jr.'s mother, Ilona Boyd of New Eagle. "I called the cell phone. There was no answer. We kept calling the cell phone every day, a couple of times a day."

Cushey had vanished. Despite family members' Herculean efforts, including their searches of woods and a lake, and consultations with psychics, mediums and a private detective, they have been unable to find him, his cell phone or duffel bag of clothes. They're certain he's been killed. They're desperate to know where his remains are, who killed him and why.

State Trooper Samuel Ferguson said he needs the help of some of Cushey's acquaintances. Some won't talk. Others have melted into the Monongahela Valley landscape.

"I think they made themselves scarce," Ferguson said.

Family members said some of Jerry Jr.'s friends no longer speak to them, either. Are they afraid? Do they know something? Was Cushey killed because of his involvement in something illicit?

"I'm not saying he's Mr. Clean, because I don't know," his mother said.

Two weeks after Cushey disappeared, family members began consulting a Monongahela psychic who relayed a series of disturbing images: drugs, a fight, metal on flesh, a wooded area, water, mold, a body bound with rope, buried where it could be dug up quickly and moved.

"She was the first one that told us my brother was gone," Helmantoler said.

Cushey is one of about 97,000 people missing nationwide, more than 43,000 of them adults, according to the Nation's Missing Children Organization Inc. and Center for Missing Adults in Phoenix.

Unlike children, adults sometimes choose to disappear, hoping to begin fresh lives in new locales.

Cushey's relatives said Jerry Jr., weak-willed and eager to please, wouldn't hurt them that way. Ferguson wouldn't rule anything out.

"If he's alive, we want to find him," Ferguson said. "If he's dead, we need to bring some closure to the family."

My wish, I wish

For you to take

Take my wish

For I wish you might

Wish my wish

When you wish tonight.

Cushey's disappearance rent a close family.

He was born Dec. 23, 1971. In the Christmas spirit, a maternity department nurse one day slipped Jerry into a red felt stocking before carrying him to his mother's hospital room.

Cushey and his sisters -- Helmantoler of Monongahela and Gina Thorn of Fairmont, W.Va. -- grew up on the Union farm with pigs, chickens, horses, rabbits and ducks and with some crazy goats that were supposed to graze the hillside but nibbled the house's wood siding instead.

"Jerry had a little donkey. Name was Pancho," said his father, divorced from Ilona since 1995.

In the remote area nearly a mile from a paved road, the children had only each other for playmates. They rode sleds and snowmobiles, played hide and seek with four-wheel-drive vehicles in the woods and built bonfires.

Sonya, the eldest, was the mother hen. Gina, the youngest, was the wild one who sneaked out of her bedroom window so often her dad nailed it shut. Helmantoler said middle child Jerry was shy "and so dang tiny," until an 11th-grade growth spurt, that he needed a protector.

"I beat up a couple of people -- and they were boys -- because they made fun of him," she said.

Helmantoler is still her brother's protector. Perhaps no family member puts more pressure on the police to solve his disappearance or tries harder to keep his name in the news than she does.

Early in adolescence, Jerry visited a girl who had a crush on him and returned nonplussed, hair mussed and shirt askew. "She threw me down on the couch and everything else," he told his family.

"We made fun of him," Helmantoler said. "We said, 'Jerry, isn't it supposed to be the other way around?' "

In time, he got the idea. As he bulked to 170 pounds and grew to 5 feet 9, with brown eyes and black hair, Cushey became a ladies' man, the romantic kind who leaves flowers and writes love notes.

Cushey once considered suicide because of a broken heart.

"He was a romancer. He was never a user or one-night-stander. He was Romeo," Helmantoler said.

At his dad's house, Cushey's bedroom walls are adorned with posters not of scantily clad models but of a couple in a seductive dance and a man and woman snuggling in a car on Lover's Lane. He expressed his romantic notions in his poetry.

Into my life

This angel did fall.

Catch her, I did

Breaking her fall.

Cushey graduated from Ringgold High School in 1989 and moved from job to job, sampling careers, never settling on one.

He worked for ITS Corp., a Peters manufacturer of television transmission equipment, then opened a car parts and stereo business, Fineline Custom Automotive in Finleyville.

"He didn't have much in stock. ... He ordered most of the stuff. That lasted about a year and a half, then it fell through," Thorn said.

Cushey opened an arcade in Charleroi, another venture that lasted less than two years. He worked at Italian Village Pizza at Century III Mall in West Mifflin, Allegheny County. He tended bar at the Russian Club in Monongahela. He worked at Quality Concrete Inc. in Pittsburgh.

He began managing Orlean Gypsy, a Mon Valley rock band. Former band member Jeremy Wingo said Cushey was dating his sister, Jennifer, when he attended a performance and expressed interest in getting involved.

Cushey didn't sing or play an instrument, but as Wingo, band member Jimmy Gamble and family members told it, he did about everything else. He operated the light and sound systems, repaired raggedy equipment on the fly, booked performances, even maintained the van the band used.

The band turned at least one of Cushey's poems into a song, and he designed business cards for the group.

"He was good at everything. ... I called him MacGyver," Wingo said.

Cushey enjoyed photography. He liked to draw, and family members encouraged him to consider art school. However, he didn't seem able, or willing, to capitalize on his many talents.

Relatives said he was a poor judge of character who wanted too much to be accepted and let others take advantage of him. Perhaps, Helmantoler said, somebody persuaded her brother to sell drugs.

"My brother was a follower," she said. "He was never a leader."

In January 2002, 47-year-old Robert R. Church died of an accidental cocaine overdose in his Monongahela apartment. Helmantoler said she was disturbed to hear investigators found among Church's possessions a notebook or address book containing her brother's name.

Trooper Ferguson said he was aware of Church's death but had no information about a notebook bearing Cushey's name. Monongahela police Chief Dennis Mendicino, after reviewing an inventory of Church's possessions, said he didn't see an address book listed.

Where did I go wrong?

Never wanted to hurt no one.

No excuse for the things I've done.

Only wanted to be someone.

Wanted friends and a little fun.

Cushey moved to the St. Louis area in fall 1999. Relatives cited a budding relationship with a woman he befriended over the Internet; Thorn said her brother also may have wanted to distance himself from somebody in the Mon Valley.

"Supposedly, Jerry owed him some money," Thorn said. "But I never did know what it was all about."

Cushey and his prospective girlfriend parted company within two weeks. He looked for a room and moved in with another woman and her pregnant daughter.

Cushey got work as a carpet installer -- he learned on the job and traveled from state to state -- and booked a gig in the St. Louis area for Orlean Gypsy. Band members went out for a week, making Cushey wistful.

Two weeks later, he followed them home, making the trip by bus because he had decided to leave his aging car behind. His dad picked him up at the bus station in Washington in December 2000, just before Christmas, and Cushey began what may have been the last 10 months of his life.

Family members wish he had stayed in St. Louis, away from the people and places that led him to trouble. But that's not how they felt at the time.

"We were just so excited," Thorn said, "for him to come home."

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06358/748063-58.stm

After five years, family continues to seek closure

Sunday, December 24, 2006
By Janice Crompton, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

This weekend, Jerry Cushey Jr. would have celebrated his 35th birthday.
He is spoken of in the past tense because his family believes Jerry is dead.

They have worked tirelessly for closure, for the Christian burial they believe Jerry deserves, but loved ones say they have been foiled and frustrated at every turn by a police investigation they say was mishandled from the start.

"I have cried so many tears so many nights," said Sonya Helmantoler of Monongahela, Jerry's older sister by 15 months. "I don't know why they won't do anything with this case. I will not go away. I want to know what happened."

Jerry disappeared five years ago on the day he was moving into a new apartment with an old acquaintance, Christopher Myers. The pair made plans to move into an apartment above a tattoo business that Mr. Myers owned, Totally Tattoos on Second Street in Monongahela.

Jerry didn't go to work on Oct. 12, 2001, because he planned to do some work on the apartment with Mr. Myers, according to family members. He picked up his paycheck from the local construction company he worked for and cashed it at a local beer distributor after making plans with some co-workers to meet at a local social club later that night.

Jerry never made the rendezvous with his co-workers, and was last seen by a friend outside the tattoo shop early in the evening.

Since that time, Mr. Myers has been arrested for impersonating Jerry in phone calls to his mother and police, a possible eyewitness has come forward and new evidence has been unearthed by a private investigator, but no arrests have been made in Jerry's disappearance to the dismay of his family.

In the days after Jerry vanished, a Jeep Wrangler that Jerry often borrowed from his father was returned to the home of the elder Mr. Cushey, who saw a man who was not his son park the vehicle in his yard.

When family members asked Mr. Myers where Jerry was, they said he told them Jerry stole his van and $1,500. He reported the van missing on Oct. 16, 2001, but the vehicle had already been found the day before by West Virginia police over an embankment near Cheat Lake. A stick was lodged against the accelerator and a tree kept the van from plunging into a stream.

During the next several weeks, Jerry's mother, Ilona Boyd, along with the Pennsylvania State Police and Union Township police, received several phone calls from a person claiming to be Jerry and giving several excuses as to why he left town, including that he was going to Arizona with a girlfriend and that he owed someone $10,000 and was living in West Virginia. The voice was not Jerry's, Mrs. Boyd said.

Mr. Myers made the phone calls, state police later determined. Police charged him in October 2004 with three counts of tampering with evidence for impersonating Jerry and one count of obstructing the administration of law or other governmental functions for secretly returning Jerry Cushey Sr.'s Jeep the day after Jerry Jr.'s disappearance, then denying it.

When confronted by police about returning the Jeep, Mr. Myers said: "OK. In the beginning I denied it because I was scared. I just didn't want to get involved," according to a criminal complaint filed by police.

In the complaint, Mr. Myers also commented about being caught placing the crank phone calls: "Okay. You were on me hard," said Mr. Myers, who has a juvenile criminal record for burglary. "I knew that because of my prior past. I was trying to get you guys off of me, not to look at me. I know I look bad."

When Mr. Myers was arraigned on the criminal charges, he was jailed on a $75,000 straight cash bond, but a month later, the bond was dropped by Washington County Common Pleas Court Judge Katherine Emery. Mr. Myers was released on his own recognizance with the condition that he report weekly to state police.

It's unclear if Mr. Myers has kept up his part of the bargain, but court records show numerous trial continuances requested by his lawyer.

Beginning in October 2005, Mr. Myers' lawyer, Dianne Zerega, has requested and been granted five delays, citing ongoing cooperation with the county district attorney's office.

In court papers filed Oct. 6, 2005, Ms. Zerega asked the court for a continuance, stating: "The defendant came to an agreement with the district attorney's office which has not been completed."

A month later, on Nov. 2, 2005, Ms. Zerega requested and was granted a continuance for the same reason, and on May 22, 2006, court filings by Ms. Zerega state: "The defendant has not completed his activity for the commonwealth."

On Sept. 6, 2006 and Nov. 21, 2006, Ms. Zerega had appealed to county Common Pleas Court Judge John DiSalle for more continuances, stating that Mr. Myers has entered plea agreement negotiations with the district attorney's office.

None of the records include details of Mr. Myers' cooperation.

His next hearing before Judge DiSalle is scheduled for Feb. 26, 2007.

Mr. Myers and District Attorney John C. Pettit could not be reached for comment, and Ms. Zerega declined comment.

Jerry's family can't understand why Mr. Myers hasn't been charged in Jerry's disappearance, or why more information about other possible suspects hasn't been forthcoming since his arrest more than two years ago.

State police Cpl. Brian Barnhart said he couldn't disclose Mr. Myers' level of cooperation, but said he has sympathy for the Cushey family.

"I feel terrible for them," he said. "It's very difficult."

Cpl. Barnhart said the investigation still is active and interviews are ongoing.

Jerry's family has gone to incredible lengths to find the answers that still elude them, including consulting five psychics and undertaking an investigation of their own.

The family raised $3,500 during a fund-raiser to hire a private investigator, but said they "never received a shred of paper" from the Pittsburgh agency. This summer, they consulted private investigator Jan Chico of Newell, Fayette County, who has taken on the case at no charge.

Ms. Helmantoler said Ms. Chico has been indispensable to the case, gathering new evidence and information that hopefully will yield results.

The family continues to hang missing posters on utility poles in Monongahela, Charleroi, and outside of another tattoo business Mr. Myers owns in Connellsville.

"They will always see my brother's face," Ms. Helmantoler said.

The family pushed police to search Cheat Lake, along with the Monongahela River, which was scoured last summer, but the family also has formed and organized search parties that provided police with possible evidence, such as an Adidas ball cap they believe Jerry was wearing.

Ms. Helmantoler took a four-week leave of absence from work and, along with several members of her family, spent every day searching the area near Cheat Lake where Mr. Myers' van was found. They came up with several items, including rubber gloves and a towel covered with an unknown substance. Ms. Helmantoler said they turned the items over to police but never heard anything more about them.

Most recently, Ms. Helmantoler sent a mass mailing to local and state politicians and government officials requesting help in the case. Several sent back responses, she said, and indicated they would try to assist.

She also sent a complaint to the state Judicial Review Board over the continued delays in Mr. Myers' case. The agency said it would investigate.

Ms. Helmantoler said it took several weeks for her brother's apartment to be searched once he was reported missing, and her family continues to be frustrated over the weeks and months it takes for police to follow up on leads that they believe are important.

Ms. Helmantoler said it's not fair that her brother's killer continues to roam free while her family got together yesterday to celebrate Jerry's birthday without him yet again.

"I'm at my wits end now," she said. "We just have that empty seat. It's not fair."

Ms. Helmantoler is convinced her brother is dead because she felt his spirit visit her once while she was standing in her kitchen. Since then, he signals her and other family members by dropping dimes in shoes, pockets and other unexpected locations, she said.

"He told me I would bring him home when it was time," she said. "And, that's when I knew he was gone. We still had hope, but I knew then."

A family member recently installed a memorial stone for Jerry in the Venetia Cemetery between the graves of his uncle and cousin so the family would have a place to visit until his remains are located.

"I believe the time is coming close," she said. "I have promised my family members that I would bring him home."

In the meantime, Ms. Helmantoler tries to keep a positive outlook by sponsoring monthly teen dances at the Finleyville Community Center in honor of her brother, who she said "always wanted to do something like that."

"This is something he would have loved to have done," she said.

First published on December 24, 2006 at 12:00 am

You can help
If you have information about the disappearance of Jerry Cushey, please contact investigator Jan Chico at 724-366-3188 or state police in Belle Vernon at 724-929-6262.
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