Police take new look at 1977 death of girl last seen at Westmoreland County field party
Joan Rasperger was found dead in Salem Township; no arrests ever made
A new appeal was made Thursday for information about the death of a teenage girl who was seen at a field party in Westmoreland County nearly 40 years ago.
State police said the remains of Joan Marie Rasperger, 15, were found in a wooded area along a creek near Route 819 in Salem Township in November 1977, about four months after she went missing. The area is now the Westmoreland Heritage Trail. Forensic examiners weren't able to determine a cause of death because her body was so badly decomposed.
VIDEO: Watch Ashlie Hardway's report
Police said Rasperger was last seen alive by friends at a field party on July 6, 1977, in the area of St. Sylvester Church in Slickville.
Rasperger told her mother she and a girlfriend were going to a carnival, which happened to be a few hundred yards from the field party where she ended up.
"I called the girl's mother the next morning because she didn't come home. The mother said she didn't know she would have been," Barbara Rasperger said at her home on Thursday afternoon. "Her daughter came home but my daughter didn't come home."
Anyone with information is asked to call Trooper James Daggett at the Kiski Valley station. Callers can remain anonymous.
"I think about it every day and hopefully they would find out. It seems like it's getting too late to find out," Barbara Rasperger said. "I wish they would find the person, but it's been so many years ago...Just tell me what happened that night that she didn't come home."
In March 1997, The Associated Press reported that state police were looking at similarities in the deaths of Joan Rasperger and 16-year-old Barbara Bruzda, whose body was found dumped in a rural area of Indiana County in 1978. The article indicated that the girls knew each other from school.
Ronald Lee Weiss, of Indiana County, was found guilty in 1997 of killing Bruzda.
Nobody was ever charged in Rasperger's death. An old newspaper article stated that Rasperger left the field party around 10 p.m. with a Slickville man. That man was not identified.
Anyone with information is being asked to call 724-727-3434.