Identifying the Victim

To rehash, the body of “The Girl on Church Hill” was discovered by a passing motorist and his son around 1:15 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon. The date was June 12, 1977.

The victim was a white female with an estimated age between 21 and 30. Body lying face down. Nude. Split wide open from throat to crotch. Internal organs removed.

Shortly after the coroner pronounced the victim dead at the scene, rescue personnel transported the body to Doylestown Hospital. The autopsy took place the next day in the hospital’s morgue.

The Autopsy

Dr. Halbert Fillinger performed the autopsy. An expert in the homicide field, Fillinger spent the previous 15 years as the assistant medical examiner for the City of Philadelphia. Over the years that followed, he worked on some of the highest-profile murder cases in the region. His input proved instrumental in solving several cases.

Bucks County asked him to perform this autopsy.

As previously mentioned in Part I, he followed the usual protocol and reported:

• Body of well-developed, well-nourished white female.
• Shoulder length frizzy brown hair.
• Ears pierced.
• Silver polish on fingernails.
• Age somewhere between 21 and 25.
• 5-feet-5 and 130 pounds.
• Head normal size.
• Eyes brown.
• Only article on body: 10-carat, yellow-gold ring with “LOVE” in block letters and small diamond chip mounted inside “O.”
• Several ant bites covering body.
• Marks on buttocks consistent with being dragged across the ground.
• Small cuts on right thumb and left pinkie appearing to be defense wounds.
• Bruising and hemorrhaging on back of head – indicating being struck three times, but not hard enough to fracture the skull.
• Hemorrhages on cheeks and around eyes.
• Discoloration across upper chest.
• Multiple stab wounds to chest.
• Body cavity washed out.
• Internal organs eviscerated with surgeon’s precision.
• Turkish towel stuffed into abdominal cavity to absorb seepage of blood during transportation of body to dump site.

Fillinger estimated the time of death as somewhere between 1:30 on Friday afternoon – 24 hours before the discovery of the body – and 1:30 on Sunday morning – 12 hours before discovery of the body. That represented a window of 36 hours when the murder occurred.

He theorized that the blows to the head dazed the victim, but weren’t lethal. So it was possible that she was attempting to defend herself as the killer started going about his business of killing her and carving her up.

Anything Missing?

In my opinion, the autopsy report lacked some vital information:

• Did the victim engage in sexual intercourse prior to being killed?
• If sexual intercourse did, in fact, take place, was it forced?
• In other words, did the killer rape the victim?
• Or, did the killer have sexual intercourse with the victim postmortem?

The missing information begs two additional questions:

1. Did Fillinger withhold this information on purpose?
2. Or did the killer destroy, or remove, the victim’s vagina and make it impossible to determine?

Knowing if or not intercourse was involved – and when it happened – enhances the killer’s M.O. and could help in the identification process.

Jane Doe

At this point, police lacked the name of the victim. So she was classified as a Jane Doe.

Police investigators searched the missing-persons data base in the N.C.I.C. computer for matching descriptions, but found none. No new, or recent, reports of missing persons matching the description. Plus, a canvas of the surrounding area failed to find anyone who could identify the victim.

To help in the identification process, Fillinger sent copies of the victim’s fingerprints to the state police. And a forensic dentist took impressions of the victim’s teeth in the hopes of finding a match by searching dental records.

Out of options, police released a photo of the victim to the local newspaper. A police photographer snapped the photo at the morgue.

The following day, The Intelligencer ran a story with the accompanying photo and this message:

“The District Attorney’s office has asked that this picture be printed in hopes someone may identify this woman whose body was found in Buckingham Township yesterday.”

Ringing Off the Hook

Phone lines at the District Attorney’s office started ringing off the hook almost as soon as the newspaper hit the street. Some callers tried to identify the killer:

• A gypsy who ran a fortune-telling parlor in the area.
• A member of the Breed Motorcycle Gang.
• Temple students who practiced witchcraft at the top of Church Hill.

Other callers tried to identify the victim:

• Woman from Bensalem who bought her dog four years earlier.
• Girl who went to the same doctor.
• Neighbor.
• Customers.
• Sister.
• Wife who hadn’t been seen for the last few days.
• Hitchhiker.
• Babysitter.
• Neighbor with false teeth.
• One-night stand in Baltimore eight months earlier.

None of those “tips” panned out. But, finally, one did.

Breakthrough

Late that same afternoon, a man from Bristol, age 49, called. He hoped he was wrong, but the photo of the victim closely resembled his daughter. He hadn’t seen her for a few days. He thought she went to the Jersey shore with friends. But now this photo.

He feared the worst.

At 7:25 that evening, two men and a woman arrived at the Bucks County Courthouse:

• Francis Ritterson, the man who phoned.
• His wife Nancy.
• His younger brother Harry.

After a brief conference at the District Attorney’s Office, county detectives transported the trio to the Doylestown Hospital. In the morgue, attendants wheeled a gurney out of the wall. A detective pulled down the sheet covering the victim’s head.

Francis Ritterson looked at the victim’s face. With tears quickly streaming, he said, “Yes, that’s my daughter.”

Police now knew the name and age of the victim:

• Shaun Eileen Ritterson.
• Age 20.

In Part IV, we’ll start looking for suspects.

In addition to being the official Eagles Outsider for BlameMyFather.com – Barry Bowe is also the author of:

• Born to Be Wild
• 1964 – The Year the Phillies Blew the Pennant
• 12 Best Eagles QBs
• Birth of the Birds
• Soon-to-be-published sexy, police procedural Caribbean Queen
• Soon-to-be-published novel Stosh Wadzinski
• Soon-to-be-published novel Polish Widow
• Work-in-Progress A Fuckin All-American