JENNIFER MARTILEZ - 7 yo (1982) - Tampa FL

The last time anyone saw 7-year-old Jennifer Martilez alive was Nov. 15, 1982.

The young girl from Tampa vanished while walking home from school. But on Thursday, authorities got a possible break in the nearly 30-year-old mystery.

"A female came forward with information regarding the missing child, 7-year-old from 1982," authorities said.

According to an affidavit, a woman named Anna
Cummings told police when she was 10 years old she lived in North Union
Township near Uniontown, Pa.

One of her neighbors, Steve Visnosky, said he had a second home in Tampa just blocks from where Jennifer went missing.


What's more: She said around that same time she
remembers seeing him dig a large hole and bury garbage bags, possibly
containing Jennifer's remains.

Cummings also said she saw a picture of Jennifer
and a newspaper article about her in Visnosky's house. Those tips led
state police investigators to a wooded area in Fayette County, Pa., on
Thursday.

"It's a unique situation that's just been
developing over the last several weeks, and we're trying to catch up
when you have 30 years time that's essentially passed, so things not all
the puzzles and pieces are in place at this point, but we are working
on putting it together," a police spokesman said.

Some members of the Martilez family learned of the
search today, bringing them a new hope for closure after all these
years. They declined an interview, however, opting to wait for the
outcome of the investigation.

A couple years ago we did speak to Jennifer's
mother, Kathy Longo, who carries a suitcase with her everywhere
containing items related to her daughter's disappearance.

"If someone came to me and said you could see your
daughter but you would die to see your daughter, I would take my life
to be able just to see my daughter for one minute," she said back in
2009.

Tampa Police are remaining tight lipped about the investigation, only saying they're working with police in Pennsylvania.

As for Visnosky, he died in 1992.
http://www.myfoxtampabay.com/story/18962291/2012/07/06/authorities-tight-lipped-on-search-for-missing-tampa-girl

Pa. search ongoing for missing Fla. girl's remains

Posted: Jul 06, 2012 7:49 AM CDT
Updated: Jul 06, 2012 7:49 AM CDT

UNIONTOWN, Pa. (AP) - State police and a team of forensic anthropologists are continuing their search in southwestern Pennsylvania for the remains of a 7-year-old girl last seen walking to school in Tampa, Fla. nearly 30 years ago.

Police got search warrants Thursday because they believe a Pennsylvania man who died in 1992 may have kidnapped Jennifer Marteliz near her home in Tampa, Fla. in November 1982.

State police say a western Pennsylvania woman who used to live next to the man has told Tampa police that she saw the man remove a large plastic bag from his car and dig a knee-deep hole near his property in Fayette County, about the time Marteliz disappeared.

That woman has also told police the man had a second home in Tampa and kept a newspaper clipping about the missing girl at his home.

http://www.wfmj.com/story/18963612/pa-search-ongoing-for-missing-fla-girls-remains#.T_b_s7MpfNg.twitter

Remains of long-missing Fla. girl not found in Pa.
JOE MANDAK, Associated Press
Updated 12:21 p.m., Friday, July 6, 2012

PITTSBURGH (AP) — A scientific expert found no trace of a Florida girl who police believe might have been buried in southwestern Pennsylvania shortly after she disappeared nearly 30 years ago.

Dennis Dirkmaat, a forensic anthropologist from Mercyhurst University, told The Associated Press on Friday that cadaver-sniffing dogs and a team of his students couldn't find any remains of Jennifer Marteliz, a 7-year-old girl last seen walking home from school in Tampa, Fla., on Nov. 15, 1982.

Pennsylvania State Police had asked Dirkmaat to help with the search after a woman told authorities she had reason to believe her former neighbor may have buried the girl near his property in Fayette County, about 40 miles south of Pittsburgh, around the time she disappeared. The man died in 1992, and the woman who came forward contends he had a second home in Tampa.

"I think we exhausted what information we had there," Dirkmaat told the AP by phone from his office in Erie.

Dirkmaat, state police and Tampa police decided to suspend the search for now, said Trooper Joseph Christy, a state police spokesman.

A natural gas line has been installed nearby, and the area has also been logged, both of which could have disrupted the soil and anything buried in it, Christy said. Dirkmaat and Christy said the team might return in the spring, when fresh vegetation could cause scents of underground remains to surface.

Halting the search "doesn't rule out further digging that may take place at a future date," Tampa police spokeswoman Andrea Davis said Friday. "We are still pursuing the Pennsylvania lead through other investigative measures."

Fayette County District Attorney Jack Heneks said he has been told that troopers plan to return next week with ground-penetrating radar or sonar to search for the remains.

State police from the Uniontown barracks called in Dirkmaat on Thursday after troopers obtained search warrants based on information relayed to them by Tampa police.

According to the warrants, a woman who was about 10 when Jennifer disappeared recently emailed Tampa police with information suggesting her former neighbor might be involved.

The tipster recalled seeing the man, who would have been in his 50s at the time, remove a large plastic bag from his car in North Union Township. She offered to lead police to a wooded area near his former property, where she said she saw a knee-deep hole at the time.

Calls to the man's son, who still lives in the area, were not returned.

Online Pennsylvania court records do not list any record of arrests or convictions for the man, and a Florida Department of Law Enforcement criminal history search likewise revealed no information.

Jennifer's family maintains a web site, www.jenniferwhereareyou.com , seeking clues about her disappearance.

Her sister, ToniLisa Marteli, responded to an email for comment on the fruitless search by saying only, "Didn't think it was ever her body to begin with."

Marteli had previously told the AP she was 11 when her sister was last seen and doesn't know how the woman learned of her sister's plight or why she recently decided to contact police. Police in Pennsylvania and Tampa haven't said why, either.

The warrants indicate the woman told police she believed the Pennsylvania man had a second home about five blocks from where Jennifer lived and that he had driven to and from Florida in a brown car. The woman also told police she once saw a photo of a missing girl and a related newspaper article in the man's house.

"Thirty years ago, this case not only changed the lives of Jennifer's family, it was a sad day for our community," Tampa police said. "Our detectives have never stopped working to bring this family closure, some sense of peace and answers about what happened to Jennifer."

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Remains-of-long-missing-Fla-girl-not-found-in-Pa-3688063.php

For decades, Anna Lewis Cummings saved a milk carton, imprinted with the face of a girl missing in Florida.
Cummings
was 9 when she first saw that face, in a newspaper clipping tacked up
inside her neighbors' trailer in Pennsylvania. The man, she remembers,
had done unspeakable things to her and her sister.
He said he knew the girl.
In a whim of curiosity this past March, Cummings, who is now 39 and living in North Carolina, searched the girl's name online:
Jennifer Marteliz
Accounts
of the 1982 case flooded her screen — the massive search by police and
psychics, a family who still believes Jennifer is alive.
The next day, Cummings wrote a letter to Tampa police about her old neighbor, Steve Visnosky.
It
caught their attention. Two officers flew 1,000 miles north. More than
two dozen other investigators converged on the lot where Cummings grew
up, where she remembers seeing two knee-deep holes, and then only one,
after Visnosky came home with a trash bag.
There would be no
immediate resolution to the 30-year-old disappearance. On Friday, police
announced they had called off the dogs and diggers with no results.
They might search again in the spring.
Until then, the family of
the missing girl, and that of Visnosky, and Cummings herself have to
deal with the suspicion she has made known:
That he killed Jennifer.
• • •
Anna
Lewis Cummings had just started grade school when a retired steel
worker and his wife moved onto her family's wooded lot in Uniontown, Pa.
She was just Anna Lewis then, one of four siblings who loved playing in the woods.
During
the summers, Steve Visnosky would join in the kids' games. The rest of
the of the year, he lived in Tampa — five blocks from Marteliz's house.
Cummings learned to fear those hot months.
She remembers games that turned to "struggles," inappropriate touching and horrors she doesn't want to explain.
She and her older sister, Tania, endured three years of abuse at his hands, she said Friday.
She calls Visnosky a "pedophile."
One
summer, Cummings said, she and Tania booby-trapped their bedroom
window, carefully erecting tiny pins on a strip of duct tape so he
couldn't sneak inside.
They thought the two holes in the yard were meant for them, Cummings said.
One
day, in the fall of 1982, Cummings recalls, Visnosky pulled up in his
brown car and removed a black plastic trash bag from the trunk.
He told the kids to "shoo," Cummings recalls. He had to take care of some garbage.
The next day, she saw that one of the holes had been filled.
Cummings says she didn't think much of it at the time.
Several
months later, the girls told their parents about some of the abuse.
Their parents confronted Visnosky and brought it up before elders at
their church.
All discouraged them from calling police, said Cummings and her mother, Carol Lewis. Eventually, they did call.
Visnosky was not charged.
The Lewises kicked him off their property. He died in 1992.
Carol
Lewis and Anna Cummings blame the abuse and ensuing gossip for wearing
down Tania. In 2001, at age 31, she lay in bed and put a bullet through
her heart.
The Visnoskys' only child, Lester, now 63, disparaged Cummings' tip in an interview with a Tampa Bay Times reporter Thursday.
"The only thing I can say," he said, "is consider the source."
Multiple attempts to reach him by phone Friday were not successful.
• • •
On Thursday, Cummings met more than two dozen officials on the 4-acre lot, about 40 miles south of Pittsburgh.
One of the experts was Dennis Dirkmaat, a forensic anthropologist who teaches at Mercyhurst College.
He
and 20 students systematically stepped through the dense deciduous
forest. Their eyes scanned the ground, looking for depressions and bits
of plastic.
It's a difficult task, looking for remains from 30 years ago. The signs disappear pretty quickly, Dirkmaat said.
But
even after three decades, the cadaver dogs sniffing the ground might be
able to track something, and the looseness of the ground gives away
holes that have been dug.
Then, there is the color of dirt. The
soil in Pennsylvania is distinct: A black organic layer rests upon
yellow clay. When someone digs, the two types mix. The dark and bright
swirl together, leaving signs for those who come later.
By 3 p.m.,
the group had focused on two specific sites on a half acre plot of
land. Police confirmed the area matched the information they received.
By the time the sun set Thursday, Dirkmaat and his crew had scrutinized 30 to 40 sites.
No bones. No Jennifer.
Not even signs of the two holes Cummings described.
• • •
Cummings and her mother say they remember telling police in 1983 about the connection between Steve Visnosky and Jennifer.
Lewis says she first called Pennsylvania police, who referred her to Tampa.
She
remembers speaking to a detective who said he was in charge of the
case. She never heard back from him. Cummings assumed it had been
resolved.
Decades passed.
The email Cummings wrote this year made its way to Tampa cold case Detective Eric Houston.
When
Cummings told him she would be in Pennsylvania in July for a family
vacation, he flew up to meet her, she says. Tampa police would not
provide more details and through a spokeswoman, Houston declined to
comment.
When the search shut down Friday, police said they hadn't ruled out digging again.
Cummings hopes for evidence that could bring closure.
But the Marteliz family doubts that will happen with bones on a Pennsylvania lot.
It
has been a difficult couple of days for Jennifer's relatives, said
family spokesman Bryant Camareno. And the years have worn on them.
But Kathy Longo still carries her daughter's teddy bear, and in her heart, she still believes Jennifer is alive.
She doesn't want the search to uncover any bones.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/cold-case-of-missing-girl-from-florida-stalls-after-search-for-bones-in/1239210