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TagsBY ALICIA CRUZ
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
Lee Anthony Evans, 56, of Irvington and Philander Hampton, 53, of Jersey City were arraigned Wednesday before the judge Peter J. Vazquez on murder and arson charges in connection with the 31-year-old cold case involving five teenage boys who vanished from Newark.
Both men pleaded not guilty.
Investigators believe the 1978 mystery has been solved. The case involving Randy Johnson, 16, Melvin Pittman, 17, Ernest Taylor, 17, and Alvin Turner, 16, all of Newark, and Michael McDowell, 16, of East Orange baffled investigators for years.
Desperate for clues as to how, why, when and where the young boys disappeared, detectives followed lead after lead, at one time, even enlisting the help of a psychic. Finally, they got the break they hunted for with bated breath and it led them to long-time suspect, Lee Evans via his cousin, Philander Hampton.
Shortly before 8 p.m. Monday, the investigators who diligently worked this cold case arrived at 10 Melville Place in Irvington, a warehouse where Evans stored work supplies and placed him under arrest without incident.Newark law enforcement top brass are lauding the professional yet dogged manner in which six detectives pursued this ice-cold case for the last two years.
Detectives Louis Carrega and Jack Eustey (Ret.) decided to re-open the case in 2008 and set up shop in an office at police headquarters, bringing other seasoned detectives on board for the journey.
With a dry-erase board, old computers, dusty boxes filled with files as old as the investigators, Detectives William Tietjen, Joseph Hadley, Murad Muhammad and Detective-Sergeant Darnell Henry joined Carrega and Eustey as they all immersed themselves in every clue and file; re-interviewed witnesses, jogged the memories of retired firefighters and never let up on their questioning of Evans, a well-known long-time resident of Newark who worked as a contractor. It paid off.
The first step in their long-awaited, tedious discovery began with the death of a cousin of the two suspects, Maurice Woody-Olds, whom police suspected was a possible accomplice in the murderers. With the death of Woody-Olds in 2008, police shifted their focus to Hampton. But with little evidence to actually tie him to the murders, police were stonewalled until 18 months ago when a tip from a witness gave investigators evidence they could corroborate and apply a little more pressure to Hampton.
Their methodical pursuit of Hampton over that 18-month time frame enabled them to break Hampton down until his bits of information began to form a tapestry that told a sordid tale of arson and murder. It led the investigation back to Evans, who was interviewed several times throughout the investigation and even passed a polygraph examination.
The information Hampton gave led detectives to a connection between a seemingly unrelated fire at 256 Camden St., on Aug. 20, 1978, and the disappearance of the five boys.
Police now theorize that Evans, 23 at the time of the murders, played pick-up basketball at West Side Park with the five teens before dropping them off, one by one at their homes in August 1978. All were familiar with Evans, who worked as a painter and carpenter at the time as he often hired them to perform odd jobs for him. Police say that Evans believed the boys had stolen a pound of marijuana from him so he lured them back out of their homes around 10 p.m. under the guise of helping him move some boxes. Instead, he took them to the Camden Street home and set it on fire sometime around midnight on August 20.
Newark Fire Chief, Michael Lalor, who was not on the three-alarm fire call on August 20, 1978, said that when the fire department arrived on the scene that evening, the house was fully engulfed in flames.
When the cold-case investigators approached retired firefighters about the 1978 fire, no one could recall the details of it. Records of the fire, which was deemed arson, were destroyed in 2008 after a water pipe burst in the basement of the 18th Avenue headquarters building so investigators could not develop any leads from that.
The bodies of the five boys have never been found, but police are still pursuing leads in that aspect of the case, said Supervisor Detective Sergeant Henry.
Lillie Williams, mother of victim Melvin Williams, spoke with The Star-Ledger.
"For the first five years, I thought maybe he was just away, and would come home, but there were no phone calls, nothing. I knew something had happened. I knew it was bad. I do believe he's dead. I'm pretty sure he's dead. We were hoping for a miracle, but things have just about run out for us."
Lillie William's still resides in the same home on Beverly Street that her son left that summer night in August 1978.
