Family of 1968 murder victim appeals for info on killer

READING, Pa. – The family of a teenager whose bullet-riddled remains were recently identified in eastern Pennsylvania 46 years after she ran away from home say they won't be satisfied until they find out the identity of her killer.

The family of Sandra Ann Stiver accepted her cremated remains at a news conference Monday at the Berks County coroner's office near Reading.

"We're sad and we're hurt and we're mad," said Sandy's sister, Hazel Demoss, of Richfield, Ohio. "We want to know who did it."

Sandy Stiver, 14, and her sister-in-law Martha Stiver, 17, disappeared in 1968 after running away from home in Philadelphia. Hazel Stiver said both teens were "wild," but the family doesn't know what compelled them to flee that summer day.

Sandy's body was found in August 1968, about a week after authorities said she had been shot several times with a .22-caliber weapon. Martha's remains were recovered the following April about five miles away in French Creek State Park in Elverson. Her cause of death has not been determined, but authorities say she was also murdered.

Neither victim could be identified and no connection to the Philadelphia missing-persons case was made. The teens were buried in adjoining, unmarked graves in a potter's field outside Reading, about 60 miles northwest of Philadelphia.

Decades later, Hazel Stiver found information about two unidentified murder victims on the website of the Doe Network, a group of amateur sleuths that seeks to attach names to unidentified bodies, and suspected they might belong to her family members.

The bodies were exhumed last fall and identified a month ago through DNA testing.

"If there's anyone out there with any kind of information from 1968, when these murders took place ... please, it's time to have a conscience and it's time to fess up," Berks County Coroner Dennis Hess said Monday.

State police say they are pursuing active leads.

Sandy's elderly mother, Elizabeth Stiver, choked back tears and held a tissue over her mouth as Hess slid a metal box with her daughter's ashes in front of her.

The remains of Martha Stiver will be sent to her family separately.