KDKA Mysteries: Deaths of teenage boy and business owner in North Union Township unsolved 50 years later
NORTH UNION TOWNSHIP, Pa (KDKA) - Police are still looking for a person likely connected to two murders that have haunted a local community for decades.
One victim was a teenage boy, the other a well-known business owner. Fifty years later, their deaths remain unsolved, not a single lead, suspect or answer.
However, people who knew them have not given up their fight for justice.
State police say it was on Bennington Road in North Union Township near a cemetery where 17-year-old Earl "Jay" Wolfe was gunned down inside his car. Fifty years and hundreds of dead-end leads later, there are still no answers.
"Two in the morning and I just remember hearing blood-curdling screams from my mom," Nancy Wolfe said.
On a cold, snowy Saturday night on Feb. 3, 1973, Wolfe left his family's business, Wolfe and Wolfe Lumber and Trucking Company, never to return.
"My younger brother blamed himself and his life was completely ruined because of it," Nancy Wolfe, Jay's sister, said.
Nancy Wolfe was only 10 years old when her brother was killed but says she remembers that fateful night like it was yesterday.
She said someone stole a tractor-trailer from the family's business on Bradbury Street the night before, so her brother Mark Wolfe and a friend were keeping an eye on things that night when they spotted something suspicious nearby: a dark green Lincoln.
"They approached the operator of the dark green Lincoln and asked him to leave," state police trooper Kalee Barnhart said. "The operator of the Lincoln stated he did not want any trouble and left. However, he continued to circle the area. This happened again and the two again confronted the operator of the Lincoln."
Nancy says when Jay arrived a few minutes later, he watched a man run across the street in front of his car and jump into the green Lincoln. She says he took off after it and was later found inside his car with three bullet wounds to the head, just 2 miles away along a then-desolate Bennington Road.
"We didn't have much to go on as far as physical evidence," said retired state trooper Jerome Venick.
Venick first worked on the Wolfe murder case in the early 2000s as part of a cold case unit. Venick says Jay Wolfe's murder was quickly linked to the death of 65-year-old Stanley Warzinski on Feb. 6, 1973, another murder that also remains unsolved.
Warzinski was a jeweler whose home neighbored the Wolfe business. Investigators say he was known to keep large amounts of money and jewelry in the trunk of his car. And just three days after Jay Wolfe's murder, Venick says Warzinski was found dead.
Investigators believe Warzinski had confronted someone who was breaking into his vehicle, was knocked unconscious, dragged into his home and set on fire. Police think Warzinski was the intended target all along and Jay Wolfe just got in the way.
"They may have just been casing his residence and came back later," Venick said.
"They apparently parked down the street and Mark saw them, alerted Jay and we all know the results."
Years passed. Police were no closer to solving the case than the day it happened, even with Mark's eyewitness description of the suspect.
"We did interviews. We did re-interviews and we looked for any evidence that we could possibly resubmit with today's technology that would help solve the case but we came up with nothing."
Newspaper clippings at the Uniontown library spanning the past five decades document the work to try to solve the murders.
Jay's parents never lost hope that someone would come forward who knew something about the deaths of their son and neighbor.
"My mom, obviously, was very depressed. I would rush home from school because I was afraid she was going to do something," Nancy Wolfe said.
"My mother would pray for a deathbed confession from somebody."
Fifty years later, that prayer is fading. However, Pennsylvania CrimeStoppers is still offering a $5,000 reward for any information leading to an arrest, though detectives aren't sure it'll ever help.
KDKA-TV's Shelley Bortz asked Venick if he thinks the case will ever be solved.
"Me personally, unfortunately, no," he said. "Too much time has gone by and there's not enough evidence to submit for reevaluation. I hope I'm wrong but that's just my opinion. You can't solve them all. And unfortunately, this is one I don't think will be solved."
