On March 18, 1964, Marise Ann Chiverella was abducted while walking to her school in Hazleton, 80 miles north of Philadelphia. The 9-year-old’s body was found hours later in a waste coal pit.
58 years later, Pennsylvania state police finally identified the man who carried out the crime.
With the help of Eric Schubert, an 18-year-old Elizabethtown College history major and genealogy expert, a face and a name appeared.
The man was Paul Forte, a 22-year-old bartender at the time.
Forte had a history. He had a guilty plea for assault in 1974, and an arrest for recklessly endangering and harassment in 1978.
The suspect passed of natural causes two years later at age 38.
Investigators exhumed Forte’s body last month and found that his DNA matched fluid found on Marise’s jacket.
Police held a press conference which was attended by Marise’s four siblings.
“We have so many precious memories of Marise. At the same time, our family will always feel the emptiness and sorrow of her absence,” said her sister Carmen Marie Radtke. “We will continue to ask ourselves, what would have been, what could have been?”
But “thanks to the Pennsylvania State Police, justice has been served today,” Radtke added.
Schubert spent two years on the case once he got permission from the authorities to help.
He’s helped crack other cold cases since founding ES Genealogy in 2016.
He said, “The investigation that went into all of this work was probably the hardest genealogy task that I’ve ever faced. This was probably the hardest thing that I’ve ever done in my entire life. And it means so much to me that I was able to be on the team that could provide answers to the Chiverella family.”
Lead investigator, State Police Cpl. Mark Baron, went on to say that the cold case was the fourth-oldest in the US to be solved using genetic genealogy.
It was also the oldest in the state.
Six decades.
“This should instill in the families of victims across the state and across the country, a sense of hope.
That no matter how long it may take, we, as law enforcement, will never give up in trying to find the perpetrators of these heinous crimes.
So, God willing, in life or in death, you will be found.” Baron continued.
It was a normal school day, and as was their common practice, Marise Chiverella’s brother and sister would walk her to St. Joseph’s Parochial School in Hazleton, Pa.
Chiverella was a shy, happy little girl who would gladly play the organ.
She aspired to be a nun and on that day, the young Chiverella wanted to get to school early just so she could give some canned goods to her teacher before attending morning Mass. She never made it to school.
And now, decades later, her case is solved thanks to Shubert and the efforts of investigators who couldn’t help but get emotional themselves.
Check out the details below for more on this decades long case!
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