Article On 1968 Peggy Reber, age 14, Lebanon, PA Murder Mystery
Millhaven
interest.
http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/articles/18069/news
Justice Is Curbed
Will a conflict of interest keep a small town from reaching closure on
a 40-year-old murder mystery?
by Kevin Uhrich & Martha Shaak
Whether due to public pressure or to the fact that he now has the
evidence needed to solve the case, Lebanon, Pa., County District
Attorney Dave Arnold has put a possible indictment in the hands of a
grand jury.
The murder and torture case of 14-year-old Margaret Lynn “Peggy” Reber
has haunted the small town of Lebanon for 40 years. On May 25, 1968,
at the rundown Maple Leaf Apartments, Peggy was found severely beaten
and strangled. She’d been mutilated with an archer’s bow, whose tip
was found protruding from her chest. One of her nipples had been
gnawed off, and she had bite marks all over her upper body.
The case remained unsolved until it was dusted off nearly three years
ago by a Lebanon police officer, Kevin Snavely, who captured statewide
attention with claims that he was fired because of his work on the
probe.
Now, as anticipation for the grand jury rises, revelations about
District Attorney Arnold’s alleged personal involvement in the case
threaten to compromise the closure locals have been seeking for so
many years.
Court documents related to the dismissal of Snavely, who was fired a
little more than two years after reopening the Reber investigation in
January 2006, say Arnold was married to a woman who allegedly slept
with the son of the prime suspect, Dick Boyer Sr., once the next-door
neighbor of Peggy and the former husband of her identical twin, Kathy
Boyer Meador.
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A 15-page federal complaint filed two weeks ago alleges that Arnold
helped stifle Snavely’s investigation after Boyer Sr., who’s now 61
and still living in Lebanon, surfaced as a suspect. Arnold never
divulged his own involvement in a 1999 domestic quarrel with his
former wife.
Snavely further states that Arnold, the chief of police and other top
officials derided him for working with amateur sleuth Michelle Gooden,
a native of Lebanon who’d been working on a book about the case and
publicly agitating for the investigation to be turned over to a grand
jury. (Gooden, who lives out of state, has now been called to testify
for the grand jury.)
In his suit against Lebanon’s highest-ranking officials, Snavely said
his bosses accused him of sharing official Reber-related documents
with Gooden, who, according to the complaint, told Snavely that
charges against Arnold related to the marital spat “had later been
reduced to a summary offense, but that the reason for the report was
that Arnold had struck his wife over his belief that she had been
unfaithful with a man named Richard Boyer Jr.,” the complaint states.
“This person,” it goes on, “was the son of the murder suspect. Gooden
believed Arnold was fearful that this information would be publicly
disclosed and would be biased against investigating and prosecuting
properly.”
Arnold vehemently denied all of Snavely’s allegations, but
acknowledged that he and his ex-wife once had a row that saw the cops
visit their home. No arrests were made, and charges were not filed,
Arnold explained.
“Their allegations against me are 100 percent false. They are just
simply lies,” Arnold declared, further explaining that his former
wife’s relationship with Boyer Jr., now 41, occurred some time before
Arnold met her.
While reluctant to comment specifically on the Reber probe or
Snavely’s complaint, Gooden said Snavely never shared police documents
with her.
Snavely, who was supposedly terminated for taking home a DVD player
from the evidence room, declined to comment on the case. His lawyer,
Don Bailey of Harrisburg, believes Arnold must immediately recuse
himself from the Reber proceedings.
“He has a conflict, obviously. He may have proven that by the way he’s
treated Kevin,” Bailey says.
Boyer Sr. didn’t return calls for comment and neither did his son. In
an interview with the Lebanon Daily News, Boyer Jr. declared his
father’s innocence. “I know he didn’t do it,” the younger Boyer told
reporter John Latimer of the Daily News.
Without naming Boyer or any other potential subjects of the
investigation, Arnold and his lead investigator Mike DiPalo said
several possible suspects have emerged—some of them now dead, and one
of them Arthur McKinley Root, the man originally acquitted in the
killing. Today Root resides at the James Crabtree Correctional Center
in Oklahoma for crimes committed in that state, and he cannot be tried
again for killing Peggy.
In April Arnold ordered that Peggy’s remains be exhumed for forensic
testing. Part of those tests included checking to see if she was
pregnant at the time of her death, something the original prosecutor
and lead police detective say was not done in 1968. As for the
results, “I do have the answer to that question,” Arnold says, “but I
can’t reveal it.”
Peggy had been left alone the weekend of her death while her mother
went to Atlantic City. The initial investigation showed that the
archer’s bow belonged to her boyfriend, then 19-year-old Ray Boyer—
Dick Boyer’s younger brother, who was married with children at the
time, but admittedly having sex with Peggy just a few days prior to
her death.
Ray Boyer, who didn’t live at the Maple Leaf, was arrested there on a
child-support complaint one day prior to the murder, which ruled him
out as a suspect. Dick and Kathy, who’d given birth to a daughter a
few weeks prior to the murder, moved out of the building the day
before the slaying.
Walter Graeff, who owned the Maple Leaf and has been dead for several
years, was considered a suspect for a time prior to Root’s arrest,
said Cliff Roland, Lebanon’s chief of detectives at the time of the
killing. But Graeff, who Roland described as “a real pervert,” was
part of a lengthy list of men who came under suspicion in the girl’s
death, primarily due to their association with the victim’s late
mother, Mary Alice, who’s been variously described as a prostitute or
someone who was simply sexually hyperactive.
Roland believes Root was guilty and he ruled out Dick Boyer as a
suspect, even though court documents indicate Boyer was probably well
known to local law enforcement for violence against some of the women
in his life.
In divorce papers filed in 1966 by ex-wife Ruth Ann Boyer, Dick Boyer
is described as a violent heavy drinker who resented his young wife’s
baby. Then, in 1973—seven years after parting ways with Ruth Ann and
five years after marrying then-14-year-old Kathy Reber—Dick Boyer
filed for divorce from Kathy. In the 1973 documents Dick states that
Kathy neglected their baby, who was born just three weeks prior to the
murder, and then started having a relationship with his brother, Ray.
Gooden has been calling on Arnold for the past year to turn the case
over to a grand jury. Although he seemed to resist the idea at first,
Arnold did just that after the results of the forensic tests performed
on Peggy came back.
“We now have additional physical evidence to work with, which we
didn’t have before,” Arnold said.
It remains to be seen what will happen to the grand jury plans if
Arnold has to recuse himself. For a tiny Eastern Pennsylvania town,
answers are long overdue.
Martha Shaak is a freelance writer in the Lebanon area. Her brother,
Kevin Uhrich, is a senior editor with Southland Publishing, publishers
of the Pasadena Weekly, L.A. CityBeat, San Diego CityBeat, the Ventura
County Reporter and others. Contact him at kev...@pasadenaweekly.com.
dejablues
"Millhaven" <mill...@intergate.com> wrote in message
news:8d862f5a-048d-4c03...@r36g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
something I found cruising alternative weeklies for articles of
interest.
http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/articles/18069/news
That was interesting. Thanks.
Chocolic
"Millhaven" <mill...@intergate.com> wrote in message
news:8d862f5a-048d-4c03...@r36g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
interest.
http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/articles/18069/news
Justice Is Curbed
Will a conflict of interest keep a small town from reaching closure on
a 40-year-old murder mystery?
by Kevin Uhrich & Martha Shaak
------------------------
Very interesting. This will make a good book.
Chocolic
rpsgt...@gmail.com
Everyone who's tried to bring the truth to light ever since has seen their jobs taken away and their lives made extremely difficult by the powers that be. As one prominent lawyer from Philadelphia once told me, "Lebanon is like Hazard County. They have their own rules, and if you bring a lawyer from outside who isn't a member of their clubhouse, they'll hang you with your own rope." He said you couldn't pay him enough to set foot in the Lebanon County Court House.
trucki...@gmail.com
dianebo...@gmail.com
Greg Carr
> I'm from Lebanon I was.to young when the murder took place.Only.late in life did I think they had to have the person by the sheer brutality of it all..I don't know forensic wise,as far as bites etc...were done back then ,but just the brutality ,,did he get up clean himself wall home and say honey I'm home?I guess if Lizzy Borden could.keep her composure anyone can.I just don't know how this jekle and Hyde could fool everyone