Police continue probe of decades old murder of Dunbar Township teen
The following is part of a weekly series on unsolved homicides and suspected homicide cases in Fayette County and the surrounding area.
On a chilly late spring evening in 1974, John David Watson Jr. left his home in Wheeler Bottom, Dunbar Township, on his 10-speed bicycle after his mother asked him to run to the store.
It was an errand that the boy had made many times before and one that was routine in small-town America in 1974.
But Watson’s trip to the store on May 2, proved to be anything but routine and it was the last time Watson’s mother or any of the 14-year-old’s family would ever see him alive.
Police said that as darkness fell on the small community, Watson’s family became concerned when the ninth-grader at Connellsville Junior High West didn’t return home.
“State police were called when he didn’t return home, around 8:50 p.m.” state police Trooper John F. Marshall said, as he leafed through more than a dozen black and white glossy photographs attached to Watson’s cold case file at the state police station in Uniontown.
“The police and the community –really, everyone — was looking for him.”
Marshall said the family issued a description of the teen for the search teams. Watson stood 5 feet 5 inches tall, weighed 130 pounds and had brown hair and brown eyes. The child was last seen wearing blue jeans, a brown coat and red shoes.
Shortly after sunrise on May 3, one of the people searching for the child spotted a person matching that description, lying face down in a field not far from Watson’s home.
Marshall said police identified the child’s body and said that the boy had suffered a single gunshot wound that resulted in his death.
His body showed no other signs of trauma. Marshall said it did not appear that Watson had been robbed. A package of cigarettes was found lying near the body. He said that very little additional evidence was found.
A short time after Watson’s body was discovered, Marshall said the boy’s bicycle was recovered from a wooded area where a path — well worn by local teens — cut through the brush from one part of the village to another.
Marshall said police, under the direction of Trooper James Curry, investigated the homicide but were unable to make much headway.
“They collected evidence and interviewed everyone involved,” Marshall said, noting that troopers were unable to pinpoint a “person of interest” in the case.
Watson’s friends were questioned and questioned again but investigators could find no evidence that Watson was anything but a normal 14-year-old.
Marshall said by all accounts, Watson was a good boy and was “into normal kid stuff,” adding that it was difficult for police to try and determine what might have motivated the child’s murderer.
One lead explored at length, Marshall said, was the discovery that someone had burglarized a boxcar hauling liquor that had been parked on railroad tracks near the location where Watson’s body was found.
Marshall said all kinds of speculation regarding the possible connection to the boxcar was explored, including the theory that Watson was involved in the heist, or a more likely scenario posed by investigators that the child had witnessed someone else stealing the alcohol and then had been gunned down.
However, none of the boxcar theories ever panned out, Marshall said.
Police also spoke at length with two witnesses who said they saw Watson after he had been to the store and was riding his bicycle toward his home, but those interviews shed little light on what happened after the boy was last seen and when his body was discovered, Marshall said.
Marshall said, as is common with cold cases, leads have slowly filtered in regarding Watson’s death over the years, but nothing substantial was ever explored, outside of the boxcar burglary, until recently.
Marshall said that when the case was re-examined a few years ago, evidence collected at the scene was checked for DNA evidence, noting that at the time of Watson’s murder, such forensic science had yet to be developed. The first case using DNA evidence was still seven years away, involving a homicide in England at the time Watson was shot to death.
“Through our re-examination, we discovered some physical evidence that has shed new light on a possible suspect,” Marshall said, noting that the “person of interest” had been one of dozens of people interviewed by police during their initial probe.
He said that as a result of this new evidence, the cold case has grown increasingly warmer, and said that he is hopeful an arrest could be coming soon.
“We do have someone we like for this, someone who is still living and we know where they are,” Marshall said. “We are getting closer all the time.”
Anyone with information regarding the disappearance and suspected killing of Johnson is asked to call police at 724-439-7111.
Additionally, Marshall said Fayette County Crime Stoppers is offering up to a $1,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the case.
Tips can be made by calling 1-888-404-TIPS.