Everything is evidence and everything is a guidepost.
That tattered piece of cloth – was it part of a scarf worn on a chilly winter’s night?
What about that gnarled-up piece of plastic?
Or that old-school pull-tab from a long-ago beer can?
At a wooded, rural expanse south of Morgantown on Wednesday, a quartet of crime scene investigators from the West Virginia State Police were trying to dig their way to closure.
The agency has just reopened a case that has chilled and intrigued the Morgantown area for more than 50 years.
On the evening of Jan. 18, 1970, WVU freshmen and friends Mared Malarik and Karen Ferrell were spied getting into a cream-colored sedan on High Street.
Malarik and Ferrell, who had just taken in a movie at the Metropolitan Theatre, opted to hitchhike rather than make a long walk in the cold back to their dormitory, the former Westchester Hall.
That was the last time they were seen alive.
Their decomposed, decapitated bodies were found in a makeshift grave that following April.
To date, their heads have never been found. That was the reason for all that digging at that site during the day that was a mix of sun and rain.
The State Police wants to locate the missing remains and it’s basing the renewed effort on the findings and theories of a former National Guardsman whose unit discovered the bodies 52 years ago.
Call it an “overlooked confession,” said the man, who prefers not to give his name right now.
The man is drawing from a series of anonymous letters related to the slayings he said weren’t taken seriously enough by State Police in 1970.
Meanwhile, serious digging commenced at the site Wednesday.
The work was meticulous. Slow-going, even.
Every incidental item, the team hoped, would be the one thing leading to the additional remains.
A couple of investigators used toothbrushes to wipe away a half-century accumulation of clay and dirt on the items retrieved.
“It’s about closure,” said Dave Castle, a crime scene coordinator who spent nearly 30 years with the Huntington Police Department before joining the State Police as a civilian employee.
He was helping oversee Wednesday’s work at the site. The team didn’t divulge the location.
“It’s about closure for any family member still back home,” he said.
“And it’s about closure for anyone who still might be around who worked on the case.”
TWEET@DominionPostWV
