RICES LANDING β Forty years ago today, Duane and Charlotte Makel laid to rest their 8-year-old daughter, Debra βDebbieβ Lynne Makel, the victim of ****** and ****** assault. Her killer has yet to be charged, but that may change, thanks to advances in science.
Sitting in their living room, the Makelβs talked about their brown-haired, blue-eyed little girl.
βShe giggled all of the time. There was a big tree with an L-shaped branch that she used to love to climb. Sheβd hang upside down from it and swing back and forth with her long hair brushing the ground,β Charlotte said. βDebbie was very outgoing.β When a new child moved into the area it was Debbie who befriended her when others did not.
βShe was the top of her class, straight Aβs,β Duane said.
On Thursday, cold case Detective John Marshall, who was assigned the case Wednesday, looked over four thick binders, containing information, photographs and interviews, laid out in front of him at the state police barracks in Uniontown.
He said he believes advancements in science creates a strong opportunity to discovering who killed the young girl.
βThere was no DNA (testing) in 1973,β Marshall said. In fact, it wasnβt until 1987 that the first DNA based conviction occurred in the United States.
In 2003, the cold case detectives investigating Debbieβs ****** sent evidence from the crime scene to a police lab where the killerβs DNA was extracted.
βWe have a DNA profile of somebody. It has been put into a database but as of this date there have been no matches,β Marshall said. βOver time, various individuals have confessed, who, through DNA, interviews and a polygraph test, have been eliminated. Whether they were braggarts, had a hero complex, or were thinking they were helping the community by confessing to this, the DNA profile showed to be negative.β
Marshall said there were only a few men who stood out during the original investigation as persons of interest. One of them, currently deceased, passed a polygraph. βNinety-nine times out of one hundred they say, βSure, letβs help,ββ Marshall said. βI will be reopening all of the interviews in the investigation. My purpose with every male I talk to is to try to get consent from them for a DNA swab,β he said.
On Oct. 5, 1973, Debbie rode the school bus less than two miles from Dry Tavern Elementary School to Ferncliff Road in Rices Landing. From there it was a short walk to her home, situated at the end of Hoy Street, a dead end. Investigators placed the time at around 3:45 p.m.
There were only four houses visible from the Makel residence in 1973. It was a warm fall day. Her brothers did not ride the bus, choosing to walk home to sell magazine subscriptions for a school fundraiser.
Charlotte and Duane were both at work; he at Avella High School where he taught at the time, and she at a sewing factory. The boys arrived home before their parents to find their sisterβs books, coat and house key on the table. She was nowhere in sight.
Times were different then. There was no cause for alarm. It was assumed she was off playing with one of the children on the street, said retired state trooper Elmer βBudβ Schifko, 77, an original investigator of the ******. Schifkoβs family lived across from the Makels.
Schifko, who worked in the Uniontown barracks, was asked to join the investigation after Debbieβs body was found two days later near an old distillery foundation, less than 200 yards from her home. She was covered by branches and brush.
Prior to the body being discovered Schifko remembers Charlotte and Duane started to get worried when it was getting close to dinner time and they started making phone calls,Schifko said.
βWe drove around the neighborhood, all over Rices Landing and kept thinking, βThis doesnβt make any sense. We called the police and they had it announced at the football game in Jefferson,β Charlotte said. βYou just couldnβt wrap your head around it, couldnβt sleep,β said Charlotte. βYou wondered, βIs she in the river?ββ
Charles and Betty Riecks, who lived in Clarksville at the time, were at the game.
βThey announced that she was missing and asked for volunteers to search and people just started leaving. When we got there they told us to hold hands and walk. People were calling her name and it was lit up like daytime with these big search lights,β Betty said.
This type of shoulder-to-shoulder searching went on through Saturday night with hundreds of volunteers combing the woods and farmland near the residence. Many believed Debbieβs body had been moved there when searchers took a break from Saturday night to Sunday morning.
Former Greene County Coroner Frank Behm, Schifko and Marshall all said the forensic evidence proved it impossible that this was the case. Behm said, as hard as some find it to believe, they simply missed her when they searched that area.
Sunday morning, two family members, who had come to town to aid in the search, found Debbie.
The inconsistencies in stories published in the years since her death are many. Internet sites, where wannabe detectives discuss this and other cold cases, have suggested a cover-up.
Charlotte, who only recently learned of the mirth of speculation online about Debbieβs death, said she finds that thought disturbing.
βOf course you think about who may have done it but if you are wrong then what have you done to this person,β she said.
