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| Eric Eberhardt / Staff Photographer (Intelligencer file photo) Buckingham Township police officers Elwood Barnhard and Phil Simons along with a Midway Fire Co. and CB Ambulance member rope of scene where Shaun Ritterson's body was found in June of 1977. The murder is still unsolved. Body is in lower left corner of picture, but not recogizeable. |
By Matt Coughlin and Laurie Mason Schroeder
Staff Writers
Editor's note: The 1977 slaying of Shaun Ritterson is one of the most brutal, yet largely forgotten murders in Bucks County history. Crime writers Matt Coughlin and Laurie Mason Schroeder spent nearly a year reading thousands of previously unreleased police records and interviewing people connected to the case. The journalists gave a summary of their findings to investigators. As a result, the Bucks County District Attorney's Office has reopened the investigation and is retesting evidence connected to Ritterson's slaying.
Anyone with information about the killing is urged to call the District Attorney's Office at 215-348-6354
Not every member of Harry Ritterson's family thinks he killed his niece Shaun and dumped her butchered corpse on the side of Buckingham's Church Hill in 1977.
Among them, his sister Madeline Larson.
Larson said she can't believe Harry Ritterson killed Shaun despite the Bucks County District Attorney's Office's announcement last month that the 77-year-old, who passed away Jan. 27, was their primary suspect in Shaun Ritterson's slaying.
Larson said Harry, one of 11 siblings, would sleep in her kids' rooms when he stayed at her house and they never had any issues.
"He was always good to my kids," Madeline Larson said in a phone interview from her Goodville, Lancaster County, home one week after her brother's funeral in Bristol. "Harry took my oldest girl and her girlfriends out when they were kids and he was good to them."
Detectives were poised to serve a search warrant for Ritterson's DNA at his Northampton County home last month when they learned that he had died following a long battle with cancer.
They were able to obtain a sample of Ritterson's DNA before the funeral. They hope to compare the DNA with "several brown head hairs exhibiting Caucasian characteristics microscopically dissimilar to (Shaun's)" that were found on Shaun's body as well as a nightgown and bedsheets with blood on them that had been in Shawn's apartment, according to court records.
Prosecutors are hopeful that a DNA analysis can close the case of Shaun's murder.
"A lot of corroborating evidence pointed in Harry Ritterson's direction," said Matt Weintraub, the county's chief of prosecution. "With a little more forensic investigation, we think we can solve this case."
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| Shaun Eileen Ritterson |
Often, when she was in trouble, family members said, Shaun turned to her Uncle Harry, who lived in the Croydon area of Bristol Township. He posted her bail more than once and gave her rides whenever she called, family members said.
The 20-year-old Bristol woman was found dead on the side of Church Hill in Buckingham by a father and son driving along Holicong Road on June 12, 1977. She was naked and most of her internal organs had been removed through a large wound in her abdomen. She had last been seen at the Capri Club, a Bristol Township bar where, witnesses later told police, she had consumed drugs and alcohol.
Police records from 1977 say her cousin Jack Lister saw her leaving with a stranger. Police looking for her killer received hundreds of other tips ranging from suspicious neighborhood teens to renters who skipped town before paying the landlord.
But within weeks investigators were focusing on Harry Ritterson.
Numerous witnesses pointed to an unusually close relationship between the young woman and her then 40-year-old uncle. And, police said, he frequented the hill where Shaun's body was found and was even up there during the 36-hour period between when she was last seen and when her body was discovered.
He was repeatedly questioned and even took a lie detector test. The results of the lie detector test were not made public, but detectives believed they'd caught Harry Ritterson in several lies, police notes from the investigation show.
Prosecutors in 2011 allowed this newspaper's reporters access to those notes, along with other files and evidence. Last year, after reading a synopsis of the reporters' findings, the DA's office decided to take another look at the case and sent evidence to the FBI for testing.
In June 2012, the newspaper published a series of articles detailing the investigation, including an interview with Harry Ritterson.
Detectives said that they noticed inconsistencies in police notes of Harry's interview from 1977 and his interview last year with the newspaper.
The reinvigorated investigation has been difficult, but has also brought the family hope for closure, Shaun's mother, Nancy Ritterson, said in an interview last year. Up until the murder, Shaun's father, Francis - who died in 1997 - was close with Harry. Both were laborers and excavators, and often worked together.
Some family members say they've been heartened to hear of new leads in the case, many generated by readers who called the DA's office after reading the newspaper series.
In November, county detectives spoke with one of Shaun's former roommates, Richard Wheeler. Wheeler told them that Ritterson frequently visited his niece at their apartment and that she would get annoyed.
Wheeler told detectives that Shaun said her uncle was persistently trying to have sex with her, according to the search warrant.
Larson said she hopes the DNA evidence gathered before her older brother's funeral will clear his name.
She refutes many of the police theories that have pointed to Harry, including family members' assertions that he was the brother most skilled at gutting deer in their family of sportsmen. In the interview, she said she recalled that Francis and their youngest brother Charlie Ritterson were the ones who did the gutting during family hunting trips.
Larson insisted that her brother could not have killed Shaun, and said she believes police have have not fully explored every angle. Among them: one of Shaun's roommates who Larson recalled showing up at Shaun's funeral with a bruised and scratched face, and that unidentified man who was last seen leaving the Capri Club with Shaun.
Detectives determined that the roommate had an alibi for the injuries and witnesses who confirmed it, according to police records. The mystery of who Shaun left the club with has never been answered. It was a tip that led nowhere.
Larson went further, saying the focus on Harry was personal.
She said police had it in for Harry Ritterson and all the Rittersons. Anytime something went wrong, they got blamed, she claimed. And in the case of Shaun's death it was no different. Two of the detectives grew up in the same neighborhood as the Rittersons' and never liked Harry, Larson said, reasoning that they wanted to pin the killing on him.
In his May 2012 interview with a Calkins reporter, Harry Ritterson also said he was unfairly blamed for his favorite niece's murder.
"It hurts my feelings, after all these years," Harry said. "There's family that won't talk to me. They still accuse me to this day. I don't know why. All these years, I've been trying to figure out what happened to Shaun."
Harry told the reporter he wanted to clear his name, and offered to give a DNA sample. But one day after his interview he changed his mind, sending a message to the reporter through his girlfriend that he didn't want anything to do with the investigation.
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