The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 2

2 A Monday, Dec. 21, 1981 Philadelphia Inquirer The baffling case of a missing young woman Unlike others who had disappeared from Delaware County, Denise Marie Pierson vanished virtually without a trace. There have been no reports of lurking men, no scorned suitors, no confirmed sightings, only a few vacuous tips. prove valuable, although i'you have two vans that are being connected simply because they're brown," he said. SEPT.

4. Acting on a tip that Denise was being held at a bar in Norwood, Delaware County, and forced to work as a prostitute, state police raided the tavern. Apartments attached to bar were searched, but police found nothing. SEPT. 9.

Murphy got a tip that Janie Woolridge might have shouted, "Did Denise get her ride?" out the window of her apartment on the evening of April 14. By last week, the report had not been verified. SEPT. 18. In what both Murphy and the Piersons said they believed -might be the best lead in the case, a man called a social service agency in Chester and said he was holding Denise.

He provided information about Denise that proved to be accurate information that not even the Piersons or Murphy were aware of at thetime. That information, Murphy said last week, was being pursued. OCT. 1. The Piersons learned from a family friend in Las Vegas, that the friend's daughter, who had never heard of Denise, had had three dreams about her.

In dreams, Denise was wearing the same color clothing she wore the day.she disappeared. She vvas standing with a man and two other young women in front of a pink building with the flashing letters COMPTCHE, The Piersons found a pink building in Marcus Hook that turned out to be abandoned. Meanwhile, Murphy found that a small town in northern California is named Comptche. He sent a teletype about the Pierson case to the local sheriff's department and was awaiting a reply. Last week, as Murphy digested the "information he has developed over eightononths, he said his original gut feeling about the case has not changed.

"I still believe she was kidnapped," he said, "and there's a strong possibility that she was killed." swishing sound. Murphy believes the sound may have been made by a car passing through puddles left by a storm that night. Johnny's recollections were filed for future use. JULY 10. Nancy Anderson, a psychic from Delaware who had led pa-lice to the body of at least one missing woman in the past, told Murphy she had a "psychic impression" that Denise's body was in a pond.

Murphy organized a helicopter and search party tour of a pond on the Pennsylvania-Delaware border, where Ms. Anderson believed Denise's body lay. The search produced no body. Murphy decided to focus his investigation oh' more conventional techniques. In her diary, Mrs.

Pierson wrote, "Really thought this was the day." JULY 14. A man called the Pierson home to inform'Mrs. Pierson that his crystal ball showed "movement," which he said indicated that Denise was alive A few days later, he called again and said the movement had ceased. he said. "She's gone." He hung up.

JULY 19. Marcus Hook police told Murphy that an, informant said he saw Denise get into a brown van on Ninth Street in Marcus Hook the day she disappeared. He supplied a license number. Murphy discovered that the license plate had been stolen from a car in Philadelphia. By last week, it had not been recovered, JULY 27.

A Marcus Hook woman complained to local police 'of a foul odor in the basement of the West Ninth Street apartment. Murphy and Marcus Hook police searched the basement and found only rotting garbage. JULY 29. An 18-year-old Linwood woman told Murphy that Denise was still in the West Ninth Street apartment when her mother arrived to look for her and that Denise later left with a man. A Marcus Hook youth knew the man's identity, she said.

Murphy questioned the youth, who said he knew nothing about the Pierson case. A lie detector test indicated the youth might have been withholding information, Murphy said. About the same time, Murphy learned that Borger had held a large, ongoing party at the apartment the day Denise disappeared. Friends and associates of a Marcus Hook motorcycle gang were present, Murphy was told. AUG.

5. Marcus Hook Detective Teddy McGrath got an anonymous phone call from a man who said he had seen Denise get into a brown van at the foot of the Marcus Street bridge in Marcus Hook on April 14. The man said he was sure of the date because it was his birthday. That tip, coupled with the sighting of another brown van the same day, was one of the few in the case that matched a separate tip. Murphy now believes the two sightings might p.m.

This time when I knocked on Janie's door, smoke was all over her apartment and smelled like pot. She said she Denise wasn't there. "Went home, called the police 10 p.m. They told me to wait a few she might be home." APRIL 15. At 12:15 a.m., the Piersons' son, Johnny, 17, answered the phone in the living room.

-It was Denise. "Johnny, I'm in Delaware!" she said. Mrs. Pierson picked up the extension in her kitchen and screamed, "Denny! Denny!" Denise blurted out, "Momf and the line went dead. That morning Mrs.

Pierson's sisters, Diane Knowles and Peggy Men-denhall, drove down Route 13 into Delaware. Frustrated by the belief of Lower Chichester police that Denise had probably run away, they began showing her photo in motels, restaurants and gas stations along the highway. At the Milan Motel in Claymont, a night clerk said a young woman fitting Denise's description checked into the motel with a man about 11:30 the night before. About midnight, the clerk said, the woman made a phone call. Murphy followed up on the information a month later.

He was led to a Wilmington man Murphy believes was at the Milan Motel that night. The man, who was once arrested on charges, refused to take a lie detector test. For a time, Murphy considered the lead a good one. Now, he said, he cannot pursue it further unless he develops hew information. JUNE 15.

A woman called the Piersons' home and -whispered, "I have Denise. You can have her back for 30 G's." She hung up. Murphy considered it a crank call. JUNE 16. Murphy learned of sightings of a red-haired man seen in Newark, and Bucks County with a girl matching Denise's description.

Murphy located the man and found that his girlfriend bore a remarkable resemblance to Denise. "I saw her," Mrs. Pierson said. "I had to do a double take." JULY 2. Johnny Pierson underwent hypnosis to help him recall the phone call from Denise.

He recalled his impression that a struggle was taking place on the other end of the line. The phone, he believed, might have been snatched from his sister's grasp. Johnny also recalled hearing a Clearing the record A City of Philadelphia agency responsible for managing the Giraid estate has leased Schuylkill County coal land in a manner that profited companies dominated by a man who has been convicted of tax evasion and another who has been convicted of bribery and tax evasion. This was not clear in an article appearing in yesterday's Inquirer. It is the intention of The Inquirer that its news reports be fair and correct in every respect.

If you have a question or comment about news coverage, write to Public Service Editor, The Inquirer, 400 N. Broad Philadelphia 19101, or call 854-2537 between 9:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. Mondays through MISSING, from 1-A Dec. 2, Frazier led Murphy and two other police officers to a two-story brick house in a dilapidated neighborhood of Smyrna, Del, Inside, Frazier said, lived Denise and the North Carolina man who, he said, would not hesitate to shoot at police.

As Frazier waited in an unmarked car, the three officers knocked at the front door of the house with their holsters unsnapped. No one answered. One officer carefully peered into a rear window. The house was empty. The futile trip to Delaware had'-been maddening, but no more so than any of the dozens of other blind leads in the strange case of Denise Pierson.

Compared to more than 100 other disappearances Trooper Murphy has handled in his 16 years with the state police, it has been a case unparalleled in its complexity and lack of clues. Unlike the 10 or more young worn-' en who have disappeared in Delaware County since 1973, Denise vanished virtually without a trace. There have been no descriptions of lurking men, no scorned suitors, no confirmed sightings. There has been only a smattering of vacuous tips and false sightings that have led, like Frazier's tale, to emptiness. The scope of the leads is bewildering: A psychic's revelations, hypnosis that'yielded only shreds of clues, a haunting dream by a Pierson family friend's daughter 2,000 miles away and the peripheral involvement of motorcycle gangs.

There also have been purported sightings across the state, crank calls, a crystal ball and "tips" that Denise was seen everywhere from 30th Street Station to the Bumble Bee carnival ride in Wild-wood, N.J. With each lead, Murphy patiently checks and double-checks. Running in circles Murphy, 40, is a meticulous detective who dresses in crisp, three-piece suits. He weighs his words and ac tions carefully. Invariably, he is led by each tip in a circle back to square one.

Then he starts on a new lead. When Murphy took over the case last May, there was no trail to follow. Lower Chichester police, in fact, had dismissed Denise's disappearance as that of an ordinary runaway. But Murphy found that Denise had left her purse, money and cigarettes in her room the day she vanished. She had a secure home life, was especial ly close to her mother and had no drug or alcohol problems, he said.

She was returning home for a 6 p.m. date with her boyfriend, Murphy found, when she left her girlfriend's apartment at 5:50 p.m. April 14. Her brief, aborted phone call home just after midnight April 15 was the last time anyone was known to have seeh or heard of Denise Pierson. At the Franklin Center barracks last week, Murphy still held out hope that Denise would one day be found, dead or alive.

'Even with all the nonsense, with the that are obviously ridicu lous, he said, I still believe we're making progress." Barbara Pierson, Denise's mother, hung up the phone in her brick home in Linwood Tuesday afternoon. She had just spoken with Frazier, who was in Murphy custody after being charged with providing false information on Denise's where abouts: Frazier still insisted to Mrs. Pier son that he knew where Denise was. "But that's all I can say," he told her. "Will you help us find her?" she asked.

"I gotta go to jail now," he said. Murphy said he was convinced that Frazier had invented the story about Denise. But before Frazier's tale was dismissed by Murphy, it had provided the strongest surge of hope for Mrs. Pierson and her husband, Jack, since their daughter vanished. I was so happy for a few days, Mrs.

Pierson said. Mrs. Pierson, 39, calls herself "emo tional" and her husband "realistic." With each scrap of news about their daughter's case, Mrs. Pierson is buoyed, while her husband slowly tries to discount 'it. However, when Murphy told them of Frazier's story, even Pierson was optimistic.

iwitni ail the other leads, you could discount some aspect," he said. This one, everything seemed to fit. There was a carnival there. I'd driven by there a while back, looking for her. At the couple's kitchen table in Linwood, only eight-tenths of a mile from the Marcus Hook apartment where Denise was last seen, Mrs.

Pierson stared down at the red- checked table cloth. really thought we had some thing," she said. "1 felt inside that she was you know, alive." She buried her head in her hands. up one day, down the next. Mrs.

Pierson described it as "a pain in your heart, like a weight that goes up and down." The Frazier story went into a scrap-book Mrs. Pierson has kept on the case. The book's cover shows three terrier puppies at play. Its first page contains a photo of a smiling Denise, graced by a purple ribbon. Inside are Lotteries Daily Numbers newspaper stories about the case, a letter from the FBI and listings of leads turned sour.

The most painful leads of all were 'those involving bodies. With each newspaper story and each radio bulletin about a woman's bodybeing found in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, even Kansas and Colorado the Piersons agonized. Was it Denise? Each time, it was someone else's daughter. "You make yourself listen' to the description right down to the last detail," said Pierson, 44, an electrician. "Then you search for something to discount it anything." Of the estimated 400,000 juvenile runaway cases reported in the U.S.

each year, more than 90 percent return home within two weeks. Of the remaining 10 percent, almost all are eventually located. Well under 1 percent are found dead, usually after an abduction. Then there are the cases like Denise Pierson's, the cases called "unexplained absences." There are no nationwide crime statistics on such cases, for they are not classified as crimes until a body is found. Then they are considered homicides.

The figures on runaways were compiled by Charles Southerland, a former youth counselor who runs a missing persons organization called SEARCH in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Southerland publishes a newsletter that lists detailed descriptions of missing persons and runaways and is mailed to police departments, hospi-. tals, airlines, bus stations and social service agencies. In Southerland's estimation, the Pierson case is "Very, very rare." The fact that it has provided no solid clues, he "even more rare." Based on his Southerland said, the chances of Denise being found alive are not good. Missing clues To stale police investigator William Davis, who has investigated the cases of missing young women -as part of a special investigative task force based in Media, the Pierson case is unique.

In most disappearance cases, Davis said, some thread of credible evidence usually materializes. The Pierson case has produced virtually no solid clues. "Unfortunately, what pften happens is you find the body," said Davis. In August, for instance, Davis' recollection of a routine 1974 traffic arrest led him over a period of time to a water-filled mine pit in Luzerne County that contained the body of Beth Smith of Upper Darby, who disappeared in 1974 at age 19. It is just that sort of connection, developed over a period of time, that Murphy hopes will lead him to Denise Pierson.

"With all the work you get maybe two or three pieces of useful information and a small piece and another small piece, and eventually you build it into a solution," Murphy said. For now, however, there are the dozens of spurious leads that frustrate Murphy and torture the Pier-sons. In her kitchen last week, Mrs. Pierson summarized her life since last April 14. VYou name it, we've had it," she said.

"Black people, white people, red and green, hypnotists, psychics, carnivals, a gay guy ah, it just never ends." Almost daily, the tips pour in to Murphy, to Marcus Hook police, to the Piersons at home and at Pierson's job. Marcus Hook, the Piersons explained, is a small, gossipy town. Often they get tips before Murphy does, they said. All are checked out: APRIL 14. Denise failed to return home after leaving an apartment on West Ninth Street in Marcus Hook shared by her friend, Janie Wool-ridge, 19, and Steve Borger, the father of Ms.

Woolridge's infant daughter. In her diary, Mrs. Pierson wrote of a search begun immediately by her family. "It had been rainy heavy and at 6 p.m. if the sky was a funny color.

I waited for her, nothing. 6:45 p.m. Bob Lyons, Denise's boyfriend arrived, him and I went to Janie's sister in the next block, who went in the car with us to show us where- Janie's apartment was. Janie said she had left over a half hour ago. "We came home.

No Denise. Di I Mrs. Pierson's sister, Judy. Mable two friends of Denise stopped by. We all walked to Marcus Hook around 9 USPS 430 000 Pubhshad vary Mqrning and Sunday by Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc.

400 N. Broad Philadelphia, Pa. 19101 Member of the Associated Press. The Associated Press is entrried exclusively to the use for reproduction of an local news printed in this newspaper as well as AP news dispatches. MAItSUBSCRIFTION RATES ZONES 1-2 1 yr.

6 mo. 3 mo. 1 mo. Darya Sunday $157 80 $83.40 $43.70 $15.15 OakMr 92 00 48 75 25 75 9.00 SundwOnly 65.80 34.65 17.95 6.15 Payable in advance. For all other rates apply MaN Subscription Department Second Class Postage paid at Pa.

POSTMASTER: send address changes to: The Philadelphie Inquirer 400 North Broad Street Philadelphia. PA 19101 Classified Ads LO 3-5000 Report News (215)854-2500 Other Departments (215) 854-2000 For Guaranteed Home Delivery, or to report aeeVory problem, ca teal free In Philadelphia 665-1234 In Pennsylvania (800) 222-2765 In New Jersey (800) 523-9068 In Delaware 655-1112 Diamond Dml And AChanceTbWinThisPsndant Today and tomorrow see a dazzling array of diamond necklaces, pendants, bracelets, rings and earrings. Over half-of-a-million dollars worth. Other precious stones, too. They're the ultimate stocking stuffers.

A diamond counselor from Rosenthal diamonds will be here from 10 am until 7 pm both days to help you with your selection. And don't forget to enter our diamond heart pendant give-away: you might be the winner of this 14 kt gold necklace with V2 carat total weight of diamonds; chain included and valued at, 1,190.00. No purchase necessary. Drawing Tuesday evening, 7 pm. Winner need not be present.

Fine Jewelry on Main, Chestnut, Center City. John Wanamaker employees not eligible. All Wanamaker stores open at 9 am Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday to help in your last minute shopping.

All open late, too, Center City until 9. On Christmas Eve, all our stores are open aiafi There's still so much to enjoy now in all our stores. The Masterpiece Brass Quartet fills the Grand Court with joyous Christmas music Monday from 12:30 till 1:15 and from 2:00 until 2:45. The glorious sound will fill our Third and Fourth floor galleries, too. Monday and Tuesday, we'll have over half-a- mlllion in diamonds for you to choose from and you'll also have an opportunity to win a dazzling diamond-filled heart pendant.

It's a great opportunity to select a precious gift and sign up for the diamond prize. No purchase necessary. You could win the Grand Prize Escort the new World Car from Ford, or a day in New York behind the scenes at ABC, see a Broadway show, dinner and stay at the Warwick Hotel, or one of many other exciting prizes in our Soap Scenes White Sale Spectacular. Fill out an entry blank at your nearest Wanamaker store before January 9. No purchase necessary.

On Saturday, January 16, Susan Lucci (Erica) and Michael Minor (Brandon), stars of ABC's All My Children, come to the Grand Court from 11:00 until 12:30 to greet their fans and draw the names of the winners. They visit our King of Prussia Court Mall from 3:00 until 4:30. Prize winner will be notified. All My Children and character names are trademarks of Agnes Nixon Associates, Inc. Ah, the luxury of a beautiful bedroom to retreat to when the going gets rough.

If that's your dream, come to our new Trlbout Linen Shop and create a room you'll love to relax in. The new shop is filled with the kinds of bed coverings, pillows, bed ruffles and accessories to make all your fancies fact. And what a marvelous place to shop for special Christmas gifts. On Five, Chestnut. Grand Court Music and Light Shows Monday through Wednesday at 10:30, 11:30, 1:30, 3:30, 4:30, 6:30, 7:30, 8:30.

Christmas Eve (and through December 3()ai 10.30, 11:30, 1:30,3.30, 4:30. This year, you can watch the show from a new vantage point thenewThirdand Fourth floor galleries. Ride the cheery Christmas Trolley Loop while last-minute shopping in Center City. It stops at every block along its route: east on Chestnut from 18th Street, north on 5th Street, West on Market, south on 15th, west on Walnut. Catch a ride from noon to 8pm daily.

Fare 50 And, if you've just run-out-of-tlme, a WanamflkerGjf Certificate is the perfect present you're giving the choice of all the good things our 15 stores hold. Gift Certificates available on Main, Market and Nine, Market In our Center City store; stop at the Credit Desk in our suburban stores. A if Date Penna. N.J. Del.

Dec. 14 234 477 435 Dec. 15 373 135 016 Dec. 16 343 777 229 Dec. 17 873 965 520 Dec.

18 127 238 795 Dec. 19 157 083 963 For lottery information: Pennsylvania 215-271-1600 New Jersey 609 936-9360 Delaware 302-678-5291.