Do you know who murdered Beth Lynn Bar in 1977? On the day before Thanksgiving in 1977, six-year-old Beth Lynn Barr began her walk home from Johnston Elementary School in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, for the last time. It was Wednesday, November 23rd, and school had let out early for the holiday. Beth, a young girl, was walking the familiar ten-minute route to her family's home on Princeton Boulevard. Witnesses later reported seeing her talking to a man in a car just a few blocks from her destination.
Another witness described seeing a young girl matching Beth's description being carried into a dull blue sedan with a red and white license plate, possibly from Ohio. She was never seen alive again.
The disappearance of the police officer's daughter triggered a massive search, but initial efforts were hampered by a jurisdictional dispute. For sixteen agonizing months, her family and the community held onto a sliver of hope. That hope was extinguished on March 22, 1979, when a man walking his dogs in a wooded area near the Restland Memorial Park Cemetery in Monroeville, about seven miles from where Beth was last seen, discovered a shallow grave. The remains, still clad in the plaid coat and red pantsuit Beth had been wearing, were identified as the missing girl. An autopsy revealed she had been brutally stabbed multiple times in the chest.
The investigation into Beth Lynn Barr's murder has spanned decades and has been marked by a series of leads that ultimately led to dead ends. Early in the investigation, in December of 1977, police arrested a man named Wilbur P. “Tim” Hawthorne III. Witnesses had identified him as the man seen with Beth. Hawthorne had a prior criminal record and was also a suspect in another local murder. However, he provided an alibi, stating he was in Johnstown at the time of the abduction, and the charges were subsequently dropped. He passed a lie detector test and died in 2016 without any further connection to the case.
Over the years, other potential suspects have emerged, though none have ever been charged in connection with Beth's murder. The name of serial killer Edward Wayne Edwards, who was active in the region during that time, has been mentioned as a person of interest, although the connection is considered tenuous. More recently, a local pastor who reportedly had 'creepy' encounters with children in the area and was asked to leave his church following allegations of sexual harassment was also looked at by investigators. In another turn, an anonymous letter sent to police in 2021 suggested that a deceased former police officer may have been responsible for the crime. Despite these developments and the ongoing efforts of Allegheny County Police, the case of who killed Beth Lynn Barr remains unsolved, a lingering tragedy for her family and the community.
