• Crime junkie

• Serial

• Dr. Death

• Missing and Murdered

• Up and vanished

Thanks to the popularity of podcasts like these, Americans and the world are obsessed with famous true crime stories like The Black Dahlia, Sharon Tate, and John Wayne Gacy. 

While true crime has become entertainment, it is important to remember that these stories are about real people with families and other loved ones. Also, unlike crime dramas, real crime isn’t really solved in 1-10 episodes. 

As someone who is intrigued by true crime, I wanted to take a look around our small town for some stories close to home. 

We all know Officer Sarnese as the head of security and see him walking around our school. What some don’t realize is he had a job before this. He had some things to share about  his time when he worked on cases as a State Police Officer.

“I would have been the guy you see on TV taking blood samples, lifting the fingerprints off victims, and using luminol and black lights. But the real world is not like how it is on TV,” said Officer Sarnese.  “The stuff on TV is made for TV and is only right one out of 1000 times. Police work is a difficult way to live.” 

Sarnese has been witness to a lot of local crime. While there are some cases you may have heard about, there are also some others you probably don’t know. 

One of the most famous cold cases from all over the world is the disappearance of South Butler student Cherrie Mahan in 1985. Cherrie was an 8-year-old girl who just disappeared near her driveway after getting off her bus in Cabot. According to her father, she normally gets picked up at the bus stop, but since it was a nice Winter day, he let her walk home. 

After 10 minutes of waiting, her parents got worried and went to go look for her. There were no footprints in the snow outside the bus stop, only tire marks. Several kids on the bus stated that they saw a blue van with a skiing mural on the side, but neither the van or Cherrie was ever found. She was officially declared dead in November 1998. If she is still alive today, she would be 45 years old. 

“No open cases bother me to this day but putting a little girl in a bag comes to my mind when I’m laying down to sleep,” Sarnese stated.

He is speaking about a case he worked on in the early ’90s near 422 in Lawrence county. A fair warning, the case discussed in the next paragraph is violence against children.

“It was around lunchtime we got a call that a dad came home and found a murder in his home,” Officer Sarnese said. “We rush over and find a mother that was stabbed 4-5 times with a kitchen knife. There were three young girls ages 3-5 that were trapped in the bathroom of their mobile home and were stabbed 30-80 times. The girls were piled on top of each other and everything was severed. A small girl’s bones are very fragile so you could imagine. There was a wedding ring thrown across the room so our theory was that someone came in hitting on the mom. She more than likely shut him down because she was married and he went off, killing the mom, trapping the girls when they tried to run, and throwing the ring. After three weeks the man was arrested. He spent one year in the psych ward and walks on the streets now.” 

Officer Sarnese said that he has three other open cases still today, one being a woman in Penn township that was shot in the back of the head in her own home. 

Local crimes happen more often than you think; one being right in front of the Agway in Saxonburg. You may have heard of him because he has a plaque right outside of the police department on main street. [pictured at the top]

On December 30th, 1980, Gregory Adams, a U.S Marine Corps veteran and chief of police for Saxonburg was murdered. Donald Webb was a jewel thief at the time and was more than likely trying to get away with something when he ran a stop sign and was pulled over. When Chief Adams got up to the window, he handed him a fake ID and proceeded to shoot him multiple times in the chest. After stealing the police car and leaving him bleeding, Webb ran and the Chief died two days later in the hospital.

Donald Webb went missing for decades and was never found alive. This led it to be the longest-running cold case of a police chief in the country until his remains were found buried in his backyard outside  Boston. According to CBS, Webb was badly injured after the incident. Adams had put up a fight and shot his leg and ripped off his lower lip. He hid out from authorities in a secret room at his home for years until he died from multiple strokes. 

That story made national news and shined a spotlight on our small town. It would be hard being involved with these cases so close to home. 

“If you attach deeper emotion to the people who die then you will drive yourself nuts. You learn how to be hard,” Officer Sarnese said. 

The last local tragedy I am going to talk about is the Abbott family, a murder from Slippery Rock. 

In the summer of 2011, Celeste and Kenneth Abbott were in a “fatal car crash” according to their stepson, 40 year old Colin Abbott. He told family that he witnessed a “fiery car crash” on July 12th but when nervous family members contacted police, they had no reports of an accident. Colin was questioned and he told police that his dad and stepmom were burned beyond recognition. His story changed from the crash being from one place to another so police got a warrant to search the home. 

They found his stepmother’s [Celeste] wallet and .38 caliber gun. When questioned about what happened to Celeste and Kenneth after the crash, he said that he had the ashes and was yet to spread them. He said nothing about where the ashes were, what happened to the car, or anything else in that sense. They searched the property more and when they looked in the two ponds and burn barrels, the remains of the parents were scattered. 

He attempted to burn the bodies and then threw different parts into one of the ponds, which had receded where the remains were visible. Other body parts were left in the burn barrels and scattered around the property. It was concluded that Colin killed them to hide thefts of large amounts of money and make himself the estate’s primary owner. About two years later, he was sentenced to 35 to 80 years in prison and he had nothing to say when asked why he killed his family. 

“It amazes me how horrible the human race can be,” Officer Sarnese said. “Every time you think you’ve seen it all, someone does something more horrific.”