Hundreds of families await answers in Allegheny County cold cases

There is no readily available clearinghouse for Allegheny County’s unsolved homicides, including those within the city of Pittsburgh, but organizations that track cold cases indicate there are likely hundreds of families in the area waiting for justice.

Project: Cold Case, a nonprofit that helps families bring attention to and advocate for their loved one’s unsolved homicide, includes more than 340 entries for cases in Allegheny County and Pittsburgh.

It is not an exhaustive list of the area’s unsolved homicides, and cases are included only after they have been submitted by law enforcement or family members and verified by the investigating agency, according to the group’s website.

The oldest case included is that of 23-year-old Michelle Moore, who, according to the entry, was found strangled in Larimer on May 17, 1992.

Within the past year, multiple high-profile cases have gone unsolved despite dozens of possible witnesses.

In September, a 15-year-old boy was shot and killed at the popular Haunted Hills Hayride in North Versailles. That case, too, remains unsolved. His family has pleaded for anyone with information to come forward.

In April, multiple people started shooting at a massive underage party at an Airbnb on Pittsburgh’s North Side. Two teenage boys were killed. Police estimate around 200 people were inside the rental at the time.

“We are still actively investigating that,” Cmdr. Richard Ford said of the Airbnb case earlier this month. It is a refrain used often by police officials when asked about an ongoing case.

In this case, police have not said whether they have suspects in the case, noting only that it is an ongoing investigation.

“It’s a very complicated scene,” Ford said previously. “There’s a lot of evidence to process. There’s new things that have come out that we’re not aware of and (we) have to investigate those. We’re trying to make sure that we’ve interviewed everybody that we can interview, and in some cases we’re reinterviewing people.”

So far in 2022, Pittsburgh detectives have cleared about one-third of city’s 41 homicides. Investigators noted they’ve also cleared six homicides that occurred in 2021.

The city will begin looking into older unsolved cases next month using federal grant money. Two former investigators will reexamine the cases. Officials have not said who those investigators will be.

Families, in the meantime, wait for the call that says someone has been arrested.

“We need some closure,” said Robert Washington, whose 27-year-old daughter Ebony McCary died Aug. 2. “There are a lot of parents in Pittsburgh just like me.”

McCary, who Washington called vibrant and ambitious, was found shot in the head about 2:30 a.m. in Homewood North and died several hours later.

Washington said his plea for those with knowledge to come forward isn’t just for his sake but for all loved ones waiting for justice.

“I believe that there are people out there that know something about all these other murders going on also,” he said. “So to me, it’s not just about my daughter. It’s about all these other young men and women that are being murdered in the city.”

Some cases remain shrouded in mystery because it’s unclear whether they are actually homicides.

Between 500,000 and 600,000 people are reported missing in the United States each year, and a vast majority of them are found and the cases resolved within days.

Some, however, are not.

Robert Allison allegedly walked away from his job at Tri-River Fleeting in Bethel Park a few days before Christmas 1994, and he’s never been seen again. According to the Charley Project, a volunteer-run clearinghouse for missing persons information, Allison told a co-worker he was leaving the Ohio River towboat where he was working and heading to a bar.

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, known as NamUs, is a database of missing people and the unidentified dead. It lists 62 cases in Allegheny County dating to 1959.

Even if and when the remains of a missing person are found, it can remain unclear whether a crime has taken place.

In July 2015, bones found along the Ohio River in Avalon a year earlier were identified as missing Tribune-Review employee Daniel Niehaus.

Niehaus, an inserter at the Trib Total Media printing and distribution center in West Deer, disappeared in May 2013. He called in sick three days in a row leading up to the long Memorial Day weekend, returned for one day and then called off sick again. He never showed up for his next scheduled shift. A search of his Penn Hills neighborhood turned up nothing.

Former Penn Hills police Chief Howard Burton told the Trib in 2018 that all leads had been exhausted.

“We found him, so he’s not a missing person. It’s still just a question of how it happened,” Burton said at the time. “We’re not sure what happened.”