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| This picture of Shaun Ritterson ran in papers in 1977 when police were hoping someone knew something about her last hours alive. |
The Girl on Church Hill: Woman’s death haunted her uncle
By Laurie Mason Schroeder
and Matt Coughlin
May 10, 2012.
Harry Ritterson, 75, is leaning on a weed trimmer in the front yard of his Easton home when a reporter arrives and asks to talk to him about his niece, Shaun Eileen Ritterson.
He frowns, bows his head, and ushers the reporter over to a small bench under a red maple tree. Harry’s live-in girlfriend, Karen Koplin, stands nearby and occasionally adds to the conversation.
“She was my favorite,” he starts. “She was a good kid. We got along good together.”
Harry is silent for about 30 seconds. He looks down at his gnarled, very tanned hands, which are curled in his lap. When he looks up and begins to speak again, there’s anger in his voice.
“You know, I got blamed for that.”
June 15, 1977
Four days after their niece’s naked, gutted body was found on the side of Church Hill in Buckingham, two of her uncles were standing together at her wake as friends and family trudged into the Galzerano Funeral Home on Radcliffe Street in Bristol.
Harry Ritterson, then 41, had gone with his brother Francis and Francis’ wife, Nancy, to identify Shaun’s body at the county morgue in Doylestown. He sat with his brother and sister-in-law as police questioned them that first night, and provided a few details during the interview, mentioning that Shaun didn’t drive and also pointing out she had a “cruddy looking” roommate.
The gruesome details of Shaun’s murder had been unveiled on the front pages of the newspapers since she’d been found that Sunday afternoon. Police were still trying to piece together what happened to her and were questioning everyone they thought might know something about the Bristol woman’s slaying.
According to decades-old police notes, which are now at the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office in Doylestown, Harry made an odd comment during Shaun’s funeral. He asked his younger brother, Charles, what he’d do if he knew who the killer was.
Charles’ answer was not recorded in the notes, but Harry’s next question was: “Even if someone in the family had done it?”
May 10, 2012
Even after 34 years, his niece’s murder still haunts Harry Ritterson. He said police unfairly targeted him as the killer because of family members who “got it in their head” that he did it. Police began tailing him, he said, at all hours of the day and night.
“I couldn’t work. I had to get a lawyer.”
Harry hired Richard Klinges, a Bristol lawyer and member of the powerhouse firm of Begley, Carlin and Mandio. He said the first time he met with Klinges, the lawyer looked him in the eye and asked if he had killed Shaun.
“I said no and burst out crying right there in the office.”
The lawyer said he believed him and would take care of it. Harry told him to look out the window. Two detectives were parked outside.
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| Whenever Shaun fought with her family she went to her Uncle Harry Ritterson’s home on Main Street in Croydon. (Photo by Matt Coughlin) |
July 1977
In the weeks after Shaun Ritterson’s body was found, police talked to numerous men who were intimately involved with the 20-year-old woman. Some were briefly considered suspects before detectives checked out their alibis.
Family members were questioned and re-questioned. Detectives began to focus on her Uncle Harry. According to police notes from the time, some aspects of Harry and Shaun’s relationship made them suspicious.
He was, by all accounts, the closest person to Shaun. Shaun often turned to “Uncle Har’” when she was in trouble. He was the one who bailed her out of jail when she was caught in a woman’s house rummaging through her jewelry box years earlier.
Harry owned a home at 400 Main St. in Croydon; his driveway was just a few feet from a marina and he often worked on the marina property, police said. He had a 1950s model Chevy pickup and a blue 1973 Monte Carlo parked in the driveway. He often repaired things for others, such as a 1953 Harley-Davidson’s remnants that were on his living room floor when police interviewed him there.
Harry was the second of four brothers; Francis (Shaun’s father), then 49, was the oldest. His younger brothers were Eddie, 30, and Charles, 28.
The Ritterson boys liked to hunt and fish and grew up to be working-class men. Harry, Francis and Charles often hunted together near Charles’ home in Clearfield County. When a deer needed to be skinned, the other members of the hunting party usually turned to Harry, who had a knack for cutting and cleaning, police notes say.
By 1977, Harry was divorced. Harry and his ex, Sandra Ritterson, had married in 1962 and had three kids, Elizabeth, then 14, Harry Jr., who was about to turn 13, and Debbie, 10. The couple split in 1970 and he moved to another house. Their divorce was final in 1973, court records show.
Harry had a reputation for chasing younger women, police notes say. At the time of Shaun’s death, he was involved with at least one 25-year-old married woman and a 20-year-old waitress and he was a heavy drinker, according to the case notes.
The week after Shaun’s body was found, detectives checked the nearby Del Val Motel records. While searching Shaun’s apartment for clues, officers found a piece of blank stationary from the motel on Route 13 in her pocketbook.
Detective Charles Shaw found that Shaun had registered for a room for two on May 7, signing in at 1:23 a.m. She’d paid $19.10 to book Room 22. About 7 the next morning, she made a phone call, but the line had been busy so it didn’t go through. Shaw checked the phone number. It was the number to Harry’s house on Main Street.
Police had asked Harry if he knew anything about the area where Shaun was found. Police notes say he initially denied spending any time there. Questioned later, after family members gave differing accounts, Harry admitted frequenting a log cabin-style tavern, Rendezvous, on Route 202 in Buckingham.
Family members said Harry drank at Rendezvous with Shaun, but he didn’t tell detectives that.
Shaun’s roommate, Richard “Bones” Gittens, was asked what he remembered about Harry and Shaun’s relationship. Notes say he recounted a hushed argument the pair had outside the apartment shortly before she was killed. Gittens believed the spat was about money. Shaun called her uncle a jerk.
Harry’s friends were questioned. Their stories made police even more suspicious.
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| Shaun's uncle, Harry Ritterson, told police he, his girlfriend and another of his friends drove past where Shaun's body was found on Church Hill in Buckingham on Saturday, June 11, 1977; between when she was last seen the night before and when she was found Sunday. |
Raymond Albright told detectives that he was with Harry the weekend Shaun was killed. Albright told detectives he’d been in Tunic’s Bar in Newportville about noon on Saturday, June 11, when Harry and his girlfriend, Jackie LaSalle, entered.
The trio decided to leave for the Poconos and headed north on Route 413 into Newtown, where they stopped to buy beer. As they continued north on Route 413, Albright told police, Harry mentioned Church Hill and suggested they go there.
Albright told detectives that he and LaSalle walked around the church for a few minutes while Harry went off to relieve himself in the outhouse. Then they continued north, eventually stopping at a creek crossing off Route 611 in the far reaches of Upper Bucks, where they drank some more.
They kept heading north on 611 and stopping for beer until they got lost somewhere near Scranton and got a motel room. Albright said they started driving home the next day and got to Newportville between noon and 1 p.m., where Harry dropped him off at Tunic’s so he could get his truck.
May 10, 2012
“You know, I was the one who was trying to keep the investigation going,” Harry said as he sat outside his house with a reporter on a sunny afternoon. Workers had sealed the driveway earlier that day and there were faint, tar-like fumes in the air.
He said he put up a $1,000 reward for information. (This was confirmed through police records.)
He said he even took, and passed, a lie detector test, and that it wasn’t a pleasant experience. The detective giving him the test told him that some of his answers “didn’t add up,” he said.
“So I said, are you charging me? Because if you’re not, I’m getting out of here,” he recalled angrily.
July 1977
Police notes show that Harry did take a polygraph examination on July 25, 1977. Bucks County Detective Richard Batezel was the polygraph examiner. Batezel and county Detective Robert Gergal were the lead investigators in the case.
Batezel asked Harry to tell him what he had done and where he had gone starting on June 10 though June 12.
Harry said the last time he heard from Shaun was Thursday, June 9, when she called him to go out partying and he said no.
Then Harry told Batezel nearly the exact story that Albright did, except for one major detail. Harry said he was at the Croydon Bar on State Street with Raymond Albright on Friday, June 10 — the last night Shaun was seen alive — until 1 or 1:30 a.m.
Albright said he didn’t meet up with Harry until the next day, Saturday.
And Batezel’s notes say Harry failed the polygraph. (Police records reviewed for this story don’t list a reason for the failure and Batezel has since died.)
As he left the interview, police notes show, Harry accused Batezel of tampering with the polygraph machine to make him fail.
May 10, 2012
Harry’s house on County Line Road in Easton is perched on a hill overlooking a meadow. To get there, one must drive to the very end of Bucks County on Route 611 in Riegelsville, then climb steep, rutted country roads with blind corners and hidden intersections.
Cars whip past on the winding street. Harry noted that drivers often go too fast for the curves, before focusing back on his niece’s brutal slaying.
“You know, they opened her up like a deer and flushed her out,” he said.
Harry admitted that he was on Church Hill “the night before,” although he didn’t say if that was the night before she was killed, or the day her body was found. He said he was riding his motorcycle with a girlfriend, looking at “cemetery dates” on tombstones at the nearby church.
When the reporter remarks on the strange coincidence, he quickly pointed out that it wasn’t the exact spot where Shaun was found, just nearby. He said that a lot of people went up there back then to hang out. He said it always made him feel bad that the killer picked that spot to dump her body.
“Who knows who the killer is? He could be dead. He could be in jail,” he said.
Harry believes that a man in Shaun’s life may be the culprit.
“She didn’t have a boyfriend, but she had a secret lover in her life and no one knew. I think that might be the key,” he said. “I think she was out with her girlfriends. She had a whole bunch of girlfriends. I have no idea who could have done it. She went out to the bar that night. Then somebody must have picked her up.”
Harry said he often visits Shaun’s grave and says a prayer. He tried leaving flowers once, but Shaun’s mother got angry. More than anything else, he said, he wants to clear his name.
“It hurts my feelings, after all these years. There’s family that won’t talk to me. They still accuse me to this day. I don’t know why,” he said. “All these years, I’ve been trying to figure out what happened to Shaun.”
Harry said he’s willing to cooperate with police, if they’re still looking into Shaun’s death. He said he’d do anything to help this investigation and find the real killer.
“I’ll take a DNA test or anything,” he said.
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