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McNatt-Chiapetta, Toni 1981; PA
Topic Started: Apr 2 2006, 10:28 AM (1,033 Views)
Gaelle
Unregistered

http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review...y/s_439286.html

Tanya Kach's story resonates with those with missing family


By Jill King Greenwood
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, April 2, 2006


Leah Keeney's heart stopped when she heard the story of Tanya Kach.
"It hit way too close to home," said Keeney, whose little sister, Toni McNatt-Chiapetta, vanished from a Clairton intersection in 1981.

Like Kach, Toni was 14 years old when she disappeared.

But unlike Kach, who resurfaced March 21 after 10 years -- during which she said she was held captive in a McKeesport bedroom -- Toni is still missing.

"The first thing I thought was that this might be what happened to Toni," said Keeney, 46, who now lives in McKeesport. "I bet she's out there still. My sister didn't just fall off the face of the earth. Someone knows something."

Kach's story resonates with relatives of missing children and gives them reason to hope, said Joann Donnellan, spokeswoman for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Donnellan said families have called the center after hearing about Kach's re-emergence and wondered whether their children might be in similar situations.

Donnellan said most runaways, as Kach was, return home within a few months or, at most, three years. She said the center knows of 14 cases of children who remained missing for 10 years before resurfacing. Those cases were classified as runaways or non-family abductions, Donnellan said.

"It is rare for this to happen, but it does happen," she said. "We never give up hope here. Our motto is 'Never Forgotten' and a case is never closed here until the child is found, one way or the other. This Tanya Kach case shows that very unbelievable things can happen. You have to keep hope alive."

Elizabeth Smart, the Utah teen who vanished from her Salt Lake City bedroom in June 2002, is perhaps the best-known example of a child who resurfaced after a lengthy disappearance. Smart was found alive in March 2003 in the company of a homeless street preacher who had done work in Smart's home.

Smart, then 14, traveled to different states with the man, Brian David Mitchell, and his wife, Wanda Eileen Barzee. Mitchell was wanted for questioning in Smart's disappearance and someone called police after spotting him with two females in a Salt Lake City parking lot.

When police questioned the three, Smart wouldn't reveal her identity. Experts later theorized she was under Mitchell's control and that's why she didn't try to escape.

When Kach, a troubled teen and frequent runaway, disappeared, police questioned teachers and staff at Cornell Middle School, where Kach was an eighth-grader. They interviewed dozens of people. The FBI got involved.

She was gone, but not far.

For the better part of 10 years, Kach said, she was kept locked in an upstairs bedroom of a Soles Street home, held captive and sexually exploited by Thomas John Hose, 48, who was a security guard at what is now Cornell Intermediate School.

Hose was charged with child sex crimes and faces a preliminary hearing Thursday along with Judith Sokol, 57, a former McKeesport beautician accused of helping Kach and Hose conceal their relationship.

Gwen Elliot, a former commander with the Pittsburgh police who oversaw the family crisis and sex assault unit, investigated missing persons cases for years. She wasn't involved in the Kach investigation, but said it seems like police did everything they could to try to find her.

"If you hide someone well enough, even the police might not be able to find them," Elliot said.

Keeney said Tanya Kach has given her new hope that her sister -- who now would be 38 -- is alive somewhere.

"There's a chance that someone took her, hid her, controlled her and brainwashed her so bad that she doesn't even know who she really is," Keeney said. "She could be living somewhere thinking she's someone else and not know that there are people out there still looking for her, still wanting her to come home. I have to believe that."



Jill King Greenwood can be reached at jgreenwood@tribweb.com or 412-380-5602.
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meggilyweggily
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Weird...there are a lot more than 14 cases of kids who were missing for 10 years then turned up.
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oldies4mari2004
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http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/m/mcna...petta_toni.html
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oldies4mari2004
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Toni Lynn McNatt-Chiappetta


Left: McNatt-Chiappetta, circa 1981;
Right: Age-progression at age 37 (circa 2004)


Vital Statistics at Time of Disappearance

Missing Since: November 5, 1981 from Clairton, Pennsylvania
Classification: Non-Family Abduction
Date Of Birth: May 31, 1967
Age: 14 years old
Height and Weight: 5'2, 105 pounds
Distinguishing Characteristics: Caucasian female. Blonde hair, hazel eyes. McNatt-Chiappetta has a mole on the left side of her neck. Some agencies refer to McNatt-Chiappetta as Toni Lynn McNatt.
Clothing/Jewelry Description: A black jacket with Clairton Band imprinted on the back and Toni imprinted on the front and orange trim around the waist and cuffs.


Details of Disappearance

McNatt-Chiappetta left her family's residence in Clairton, Pennsylvania on November 5, 1981. She was headed to an evening rally at her high school, which was located about two blocks from her home. McNatt-Chiappetta was last seen walking on Miller Avenue and Mitchell Avenue at approximately 7:15 p.m. She never arrived at the rally and has not been seen again.
Authorities planned to question Dean Maksin, a former friend and neighbor of McNatt-Chiappetta's family, in August 2001 regarding her disappearance. Maksin was charged with sexually assaulting another woman in the area in 2001. Investigators interviewed Maksin after Chiappetta vanished in 1981, but he was not considered a possible suspect until after his arrest for the unrelated charge 20 years later. McNatt-Chiappetta's family said that she would have trusted Maksin at the time of her presumed abduction. There have been no arrests in Chiappetta's case.



Investigating Agency
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact:
Pennsylvania State Police
412-929-6262



Source Information
The National Center For Missing and Exploited Children
Child Protection Education Of America
WTAE-TV



Updated 1 time since October 12, 2004.

Last updated November 28, 2004.

Charley Project Home
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oldies4mari2004
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monkalup
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The Old Heifer! An oxymoron, of course.
[ *  *  * ]
http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/team4/939279/detail.html

Team 4: Old Murder Case Gets New Life
Paul Van Osdol Reports

POSTED: 7:31 p.m. EDT August 29, 2001
UPDATED: 7:41 p.m. EDT August 29, 2001

After years of looking for answers, there is new hope for the family of a Clairton girl who has been missing for 20 years.
Police have told Team 4 investigators that they are questioning a man about the disappearance of Toni Lynn McNatt, who vanished on a rainy night in November 1981.

The following is Team 4 investigator Paul Van Osdol's story:



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

State police told Van Osdol that they plan to question Dean Maksin, a Clairton city worker who was arrested earlier this month and charged with rape in an unrelated case.



Maksin is a former friend and neighbor of the McNatt family. The family is desperately hoping that this development breaks open the case of what happened to McNatt.

Police spent months searching for McNatt throughout the Mon Valley. Family members -- including Toni's older sister Leah -- made desperate pleas for her return.

"If Toni does see this, I'd like to tell her happy birthday," McNatt's sister, Leah Keeney, said in 1982.

Leah Keeney said that she thinks about Toni every day. So does Roxanne Paolicelli, Toni's other sister. They are convinced that McNatt was murdered.

"There's no body, no nothing. We're clueless. So she just disappeared off the face of the earth, and nobody just disappears," Paolicelli said.

An intersection in Clairton was the last place McNatt was seen before she vanished. Her family and the community launched an exhaustive search that took them all the way to Delaware. But her family still believes that the person responsible for her disappearance is right here in Clairton.

There was no evidence of a struggle at the family's home, where McNatt was believed to have been when she disappeared.

"My sister Toni wouldn't have just went with someone without putting up a fight or something. Whoever it was, it was somebody she trusted," Paolicelli said.

The family said that McNatt would have trusted Maksin, a family friend who's now charged with raping a woman in her home. Maksin has been questioned previously about McNatt's disappearance, and state police said that they plan to question him again in the wake of his arrest.

Team 4 tried to talk to Maksin but he would not answer our questions.

McNatt's family hopes that the revived police investigation eventually answers at least some of their questions.

"I'd settle for not even knowing who, but knowing where she's at. Someone call and say, 'Look here,'" Paolicelli said.

Maksin was released from jail on a bond of just $2,000. He has a hearing in the rape case scheduled for next month.

Police told Team 4 that they also plan to question other people about McNatt's disappearance because since no body has been found, it is still considered a missing persons case and not a murder.

Copyright 2001 by ThePittsburghChannel. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


Lauran

"If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth." The late, great Roberto Clemente.


In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
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monkalup
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The Old Heifer! An oxymoron, of course.
[ *  *  * ]
http://z13.invisionfree.com/PorchlightUSA/...opic=1817&st=0&
Lauran

"If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth." The late, great Roberto Clemente.


In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
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tatertot
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http://www.post-gazette.com/local/south/20...d-case/stories/

Family of Clairton girl missing 32 years desperate to resolve cold case
November 4, 2013 11:22 PM

Related Media:
Pittsburgh Press, Nov. 25, 1981: A Clairton Holiday Wish
Post-Gazette, Nov. 6, 1981: Mother of girl fears foul play

By Amy McConnell Schaarsmith / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

In the 32 years since the disappearance of 14-year-old Toni Lynn McNatt, her family members and even the retired Clairton police detective who investigated the case have given up hope of finding her alive. But they still cling to the possibility that someone has information that will lead them to the ninth-grader's remains and give all of them, finally, a chance for some peace.

For Lea Rae Keeney of Glassport, continuing to search for her little sister is fulfilling a pledge.

"I promised my mom on her deathbed that I would not stop looking for my sister, and I can't, because if I do, what has she got? Who's going to look for her? Because I feel like the authorities don't care," said Ms. Keeney, who is holding a candlelight vigil tonight at the intersection of Mitchell and Miller avenues, where Toni was last seen in November 1981, supposedly heading to a pep rally at Clairton High School. "There isn't a day that goes by I don't think about her -- we think something bad happened to her that night, and we also believe somebody knows what happened."

Over the years, a tangle of clues has emerged that suggest the blond, blue-eyed tomboy was murdered, probably the night she vanished and possibly even in her own home, by her own father, according to the investigator who first worked on her case. But with little to investigate -- no body, no physical evidence of a crime -- and the prime suspect now deceased, that investigator and Toni's family members say more help is needed to solve the case.

"This is going to be a murder, when all is said and done, but it's not a murder until we can find a body and that's what I want to do -- I want to find her," said retired Clairton Detective William Scully, who said he keeps in touch with Toni's sisters, Ms. Keeney and Roxanne Paolicelli of Clairton. "I'm not looking so much for justice for Toni, but for closure for the girls, to take her from where she is and let her rest."

State police investigators in Belle Vernon, who took over the case in 1985, could not be reached for comment.

Ms. Keeney said her mother, Audrey McNatt, provided a good home life and was close with her daughters. But Mr. Scully said Audrey McNatt's husband, Sam Chiapetta, was another matter. Clairton police responded to the duplex at 921 Van Kirk St. for domestic disputes on more than one occasion and also responded after Chiapetta fired his gun inside the home early one morning, Mr. Scully said.

Investigators also believe Chiapetta might have physically and possibly sexually abused one or more of the girls, including Toni, who seemed desperate to get away from the house, Mr. Scully said. The teen briefly lived with her grandmother in Uniontown in August or early September before she was supposed to start ninth grade, he said.

The face Toni showed the world, however, was of a happy, if somewhat quiet, girl who enjoyed her friends and liked the idea of becoming a "Honeybear" majorette for the high school marching band. But she didn't seem overly interested in parties, steady boyfriends or testing the limits of what she could get away with, her sister said.

"She didn't even wear makeup -- you know how some girls are 14 and they look like they're going on 41? She wasn't like that," Ms. Keeney said.

And running away? Not a chance, Ms. Keeney said.

So when Toni didn't show up at the school pep rally that Thursday and failed to meet her friend at 6:30 that evening, and when her mother -- driving the half-dozen blocks between the stadium and their home in the pouring rain -- couldn't find her, her family immediately became worried.

That night, drenched by cold November rain, they knocked on neighbors' doors, searched in alleys and along dark streets, and finally called the police around midnight, according to articles published at the time by The Pittsburgh Press. There was no sign of Toni that night, or the next day or the next, as dozens of police officers and volunteers combed the area's woods and streams.

From the beginning, Mr. Scully said he felt something was odd about Chiapetta despite his energetic searching to find Toni, whom he called his daughter but who might have been his stepdaughter. Chiapetta, a furniture mover, seemed edgy about the night Toni disappeared, when he had gotten home from work about 6 p.m. and witnesses saw the girls' mother at work until at least 7:30 p.m., Mr. Scully said.

When Chiapetta took a polygraph test and was asked if he had anything to do with Toni's disappearance, the results didn't look good, Mr. Scully said.

"He said no, but the examiner felt he was being deceptive," Mr. Scully said.

Still, with no evidence of foul play, investigators did not search the family home and soon were out of leads. About four months after Toni's disappearance, as the woods were beginning to thaw in early 1982, a man called the Clairton police station, Ms. Kenney said.

"He said, 'Your little missing girl is at the bottom of Peters Crick,' and then he hung up," Ms. Kenney said.

Again, searchers turned up nothing.

Many things about the case, and Chiapetta's possible role in it, continued to trouble the detective. Shortly after Toni's disappearance, Chiapetta -- never one for home improvements -- replaced the duplex's wooden back porch with a cement one. Toni's older sister, Ms. Paolicelli, told Mr. Scully that she woke to find her father touching her sexually one day, a few months after her sister's disappearance.

And in 1982, Audrey McNatt came to the detective with tears in her eyes and told him that, out of fear of her husband, she had misled investigators about her husband's involvement and about a potentially important detail.

"She told me, 'Scully, I feel now that Sam probably had something to do with this,' " he said. "I always felt that way, but she kind of waylaid us."

When she got home after work that Thursday night, Ms. McNatt told investigators, she found the blouse Toni had worn to school that day dripping wet and hanging from a laundry line in the basement.

"That means she went home," Mr. Scully said. "Now, was it wet from her washing it or was it wet from the pouring rain and she came back to the house to change clothes? That's what I believe happened."

Her presence at the home that night, along with that of her father and the other circumstantial evidence, has led Mr. Scully to believe that Chiapetta killed the girl, probably accidentally, and disposed of the body somewhere in the area, the detective said.

Clairton went bankrupt and in 1985 laid off its entire police force, including Mr. Scully. State police assumed management of all investigations, including Toni's case, when they took over law enforcement in the city that year, and kept authority over the case even after the Clairton police department was re-formed in 1992. The trooper who took over the case from Mr. Scully was moved to a different barracks and transferred his case to another investigator at the Belle Vernon barracks.

Through all those changes, Mr. Scully never could prove his hunch. Family members said they feel state police have given the case scant attention. Chiapetta died nearly a decade ago, followed by Audrey McNatt a few years later.

Now family members and investigators hope it's not too late to finally answer the question of what happened to Toni.

"Did the world open up and swallow my sister?" Ms. Kenney said. "Somebody, somewhere, has to know something."
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tatertot
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http://www.wtae.com/news/New-clue-in-searc...nt%20Type=Story

New clue in search for missing Clairton girl 34 years later
UPDATED 5:56 PM EST Nov 05, 2015

CLAIRTON, Pa. —Toni Mcnatt-Chiappetta was last seen Nov. 5, 1981 headed to a pep rally at her school but never made it. Thirty-four years later, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children released an age progressed photo of what Mcnatt-Chiappetta may look like at the age of 48.

Mcnatt-Chiappetta was last seen around 7 p.m. at Miller and Mitchell avenues. She was wearing a black jacket with a Clairton Band inscription with orange trim around the waist and cuffs.

Police combed the Mon Valley for months, looking for any clue that could solve the case.

The public is urged to call 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678) with any information concerning the disappearance. Calls may be made anonymously.
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