NANCY SCAMURRA - 14 yo (1984) - Amherst (NE of Buffalo) NY

If Nancy Scamurra is alive today, she's 41 years old, and she spent
the last 27 years on the run, in hiding, perhaps, with a new identity.
The disappearance of 14-year-old Nancy Scamurra from her Amherst
neighborhood, on July 1, 1984, continues to baffle -- even haunt -- some
veteran and retired Amherst detectives.
"My gut tells me she's no longer alive, but we always hold out hope,"
said Detective Lt. Joseph LaCorte, commander of the Amherst Police
Special Victims Unit.
It's one of three cases that sat unsolved for years in Amherst,
sticking in the craw of longtime detectives, along with the bike path
rape case and the 1991 stabbing death of a Wendy's night manager on
Transit Road.
Of those three, only the bike path case has been solved.
So what happened to Nancy Scamurra, who was last seen walking toward a
busy street on a summer evening in a suburb known for being safe?
"It's still just a big question mark," Detective Sgt. Michael N. Torrillo said.


As the 27th anniversary of her disappearance nears, the National
Center for Missing & Exploited Children is asking for the public's
help and re-releasing an age-progression "photo" showing what she could
look like now.
And the Special Victims Unit is opening up the cold case.
"We are actively perusing the whole file, going over old leads and
looking at some personal issues that came up during the investigation,"
LaCorte said. "We're going to go back and re-interview all family members
who can be located for any input they may have."
Amherst police have spent hundreds, perhaps thousands, of man-hours trying to find the girl.
Nancy had an argument with one of her siblings late that afternoon or
early evening, before she left her Scamridge Curve home and was seen
walking toward North Forest Road, detectives said.
The time was about 9:30 p.m. She was never seen again.
Nancy was 5-foot-6 and weighed about 150 pounds, with brown hair,
blue eyes, dimples, freckles on her nose, a half-inch scar under her
chin and calcium buildup on her right knee.
The story of Nancy Scamurra's disappearance also provides a look at
how few tools police had at their disposal in finding a missing child 27
years ago.
There were no Amber Alerts. No Internet. No electronic message boards
on area highways. No television crawls alerting the public quickly. No
social-media sites. No, or few, state clearinghouses for disseminating
information on missing kids.
"Back then, you pretty much had Teletypes that you typed up and sent out, and you hoped someone read them," LaCorte said.
So police relied on their own shoe leather, canvassing door to door
and using police dogs to search nearby fields. And the girl's mother put
up fliers looking for information.
Back in 1984, it also was much more difficult to get immediate action
in a missing-child case. "In the old days, it was not uncommon for
police agencies to have a waiting period before they would take a report
on a missing person, and it varied from jurisdiction to jurisdiction,"
said Melinda C. Stevens, director of the National Center's Missing
Children's Division.
Federal law now requires police to put such information into a national computer base immediately.
Various detectives have slightly different views about what happened
to Nancy, but they seem to agree she probably didn't run away on her
own.
"A 14-year-old girl from Williamsville didn't just disappear, leave
her home and start her life all over again in a different town," retired
Assistant Police Chief Timothy M. Green said. "We've never come up with
anything that showed she tried to re-establish her identity in any way.
I don't see a kid from Williamsville doing that in 1984."
Torrillo feels the same way. "It's not [common] for a kid to run away
with no personal items," he said. "So I think it would be more logical
that it was someone that she had contact with or someone she knew."
Detectives have said that through their extensive investigation, they
have found no evidence or strong hint of abduction by a stranger.
Statistics show that the number of cases of kids being abducted by
strangers is quite small, detectives noted.
And if Nancy had been killed and her body hidden somewhere, it would
have have been more difficult to identify her remains. She disappeared
long before the widespread use of DNA, and investigators lacked good
dental records.
However, both the National Center and police have put her case into
NamUs (the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System).
While the trail clearly has gone cold after 27 years, that doesn't mean the case can't be solved.
Police hope someone -- whether it's an old friend, a neighbor, a
family member or someone else she confided in -- still knows something
that could help solve the case.
And maybe someone's conscience will prod that person to come forward,
after looking into the eyes of an image showing what Nancy Scamurra
might look like today.
Stevens noted that such an image is not supposed to be an exact
portrait. It uses a science-based technique on how bone structure
changes, along with reference photos of parents and siblings.
"These forensic artists can create an image that may trigger recognition in people who may have seen that person," Stevens said.
Anyone with information is asked to call the National Center at (800)
THE-LOST (843-5678) or the Amherst Police Special Victims Unit at
689-1393.
http://www.buffalonews.com/city/article464894.ece

"She
was a typical, 14-year-old teenager as far as we knew. We contacted all
of her friends, family members, everyone that she ever associated
with."
Amherst Police say Nancy Jo Scamurra was last seen leaving her home on Scamridge Curve on July 1st, 1984.
"It
was quite a big deal. There were milk cartons, was the thing back in
the 80s, there was an extensive missing persons investigation," said
Amherst Police Assistant Chief Charles Cohen.
Two weeks later, a
fisherman discovered the torso of a female floating in the water of Lake
Ontario, several miles north east of Oswego Harbor.
It was
recovered by the Oswego County Sheriff's Office and determined to be the
remains of a female murder victim, but despite investigative efforts,
the body was unidentified for decades.
At that time, there were
no methods that would have been able to positively identify her. There
was no DNA at that point in time. The girl had no dental records or
medical records," Amherst Police captain Enzio Villalta said.
Friday,
law enforcement announced the body recovered from the water 28 years
ago was that of Scamurra. The connection was made after the Onondaga
Medical Examiner's office requested DNA from the remains be compared
with the missing teen from Amherst. DNA collected from her relatives
lead to the positive identification.
Oswego County Undersheriff
Gene Sullivan said, "In 1984, the types of methods we may have used to
identify a missing person, were missing. She didn't have those features
when we found her."
Now, the Oswego County Sheriff's Office is
hoping to renew public interest in the case, in an effort to solve the
crime and finally bring justice for Scamurra.
Sullivan said,
"Think back to anything you may have seen, anything you may have heard
at the time. I get it, you didn't realize it at the time what it was,
that's okay. Please don't try to figure out how relevant your
information is, we'll do that."
Anyone who might have information is asked to call the Oswego County Sheriff's Office at 1-888-349-3411.
You can also visit a special Facebook page.
http://centralny.ynn.com/content/top_stories/592246/dna-samples-identify-body-of-missing-person/

Nancy Jo Scamurra's mother fought off a deadly
cancer for several years, believing her missing 14-year-old daughter
would one day return to their Amherst home and they would be reunited.

That day never came.

Mrs. Scamurra died several years after Nancy
disappeared. And on Friday, 28 years after the teenager was last seen
walking down her neighborhood street, police revealed that her torso had
been found in Lake Ontario near Oswego, just 13 days after she went
missing on July 1, 1984.

The torso, found some seven miles out in the lake, was only recently identified because of advanced DNA tests.

"Murdered, dismembered and decapitated," Oswego
County Undersheriff Gene Sullivan said at a news conference in Amherst
Police Headquarters. He made an intense appeal to the public for any
information that might help in solving the homicide.

The Scamurra family, Sullivan said, had no connections to Oswego County.

"Nancy's mother, Rita, suffered with cancer at
least five years and she always felt Nancy would come back home. Rita
always had hope, but she passed away," said Rose Scamurra, a cousin who
also lives on Scamridge Curve where Nancy lived. "I saw Nancy the very
last night she was around. She and a girlfriend were hitting a ball
against a building, Forest Elementary School."

Donald Scamurra, her husband, recalled the neighborhood search parties.

"At the time, it was terrible," he said. "We went
out walking this whole area looking for her. We would see posters of
Nancy when we'd go to rest stops on the Thruway."

One of Nancy's four older brothers said neither he
nor his father wanted to publicly talk about the case, but he said he
was glad for the breakthrough.

On July 14, 1984, a fisherman spotted the torso
floating in Lake Ontario northeast of Oswego Harbor. He alerted
authorities and Oswego County marine deputies retrieved the remains,
which were taken to neighboring Onondaga County for an autopsy.

At that time and for nearly three decades, all that
could be said with certainty was that the torso was that of a female
under 40 years of age and 5 to 6 feet in height.

DNA samples were taken from the remains and placed
in a national data bank maintained by the FBI with the hope that one day
science would advance and an identification could be made. In the
meantime, the teenager's remains are still preserved and in the custody
of authorities.

Late last year, Ronald A. Brunelli, a forensic
examiner with the Onondaga County Medical Examiner's Office, asked that
the Oswego Sheriff's Office request that the FBI conduct a DNA test to
compare samples from the unidentified torso to DNA samples from Nancy.

When it was determined that there were no known DNA
samples of the missing teenager, authorities approached her relatives
and obtained samples from them.

Amherst Police Capt. Enzio G. Villalta, chief of
detectives, said it is standard procedure for medical examiners to
periodically request checks on the remains of individuals who have never
been positively identified.

Knowing that Nancy is a murder victim, Sullivan said, gives the case a fresh start, though many questions remain unanswered.

"We've had Oswego County investigators here a
number of times interviewing friends and family and anybody we thought
may be able to provide information," Sullivan said.

Among the unanswered questions:

* Where was the murder committed?

* How long was it before the killer placed the body in the water?

* Did currents in Lake Ontario carry her remains from Western New York east to Oswego County, which is north of Syracuse.

Rough waters and battering from objects in the
water, police said, would not have played a role in the type of harm
that had come to the teenager, whose limbs and head have never been
found.

"We know there are people out there who know about
Nancy's disappearance and murder," Sullivan said in urging them to call
the Oswego Sheriff's Office at 1-888-349-3411.

Any information, he said, might prove invaluable.
"Please don't try to figure out how relevant it might be. We'll figure
that out," he said.

As for who might be behind the killing, Sullivan
said, "It would be irresponsible for me to speculate. Nothing is off the
table. We're not discounting any leads."

To that end, he said it is possible that the body
could have been discarded in a Western New York waterway and carried by
currents in Lake Ontario to Oswego County.

Nancy, a Mill Middle School student, was
5-feet-6-inches tall and weighed about 150 pounds, with brown hair, blue
eyes, dimples, freckles on her nose and a scar under her chin. She was
described by police as a normal teenager.

Late in the afternoon before she disappeared,
detectives had said, she had a fight with one of her siblings. Relatives
said she was the youngest of five children and the only girl.

Her disappearance had baffled and haunted Amherst police for years.

Villalta said the identification now moves the case
from a missing person classification to a homicide, though foul play
had always been a concern.

"There was always the possibility that it had been
an abduction or homicide and there was also the possibility that she was
just a runaway," the Amherst captain said. "We've had tips coming in
throughout the years because her picture was widely circulated. She was
[reported] seen as far away as Vancouver."

Authorities said information on the National
Missing and Unidentified Persons System also played a role in helping
identify Nancy, whose disappearance was added to that data bank by
police. But exactly how that system helped investigators was not
revealed.

Many residents who lived along the well-kept, winding suburban street where Nancy once lived and played in 1984 have moved.

But her father is still in the two-story brick home
where his daughter lived. Robert Scamurra said he had no desire to
discuss the latest development in the case, so many years after his
daughter vanished.

"We're not interested," he said when asked if he would speak.

"At least Rita can now rest in peace," cousin Rita Scamurra said of Nancy's mom.
http://www.buffalonews.com/city/communities/amherst/article958236.ece

At least surviving family members do have some closure. Justice may have to wait for God in this one.
It always makes my heart cry when they are found dead. A child returned to loved one's makes my heart fill with joy.

William

Funeral plans set for 1984 missing teen

Updated: Friday, 07 Sep 2012, 6:53 AM EDT
Published : Friday, 07 Sep 2012, 6:53 AM EDT
Shannon Ross
Posted by: Emily Lenihan

AMHERST, N.Y. (WIVB) - Saturday, a Mass of Christian Burial will be held in Williamsville for Nancy Jo Scamurra.

The Amherst teen disappeared back in 1984, her remains were recently identified after being pulled from Lake Ontario.

The 14 year old's death is now being treated as a homicide.

http://www.wivb.com/dpp/news/local/funeral-plans-set-for-1984-missing-teen