CLINTON AVE 5 UPDATE 05/20/09
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)
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.
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.
30 Years Later -- 5 New Jersey Teens Still Missing
Posted: August 19th, 2008 09:24 AM EDT
Story by wnbc.com
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.
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