She never arrived at school or at mass that morning it’s a big puzzle that you just have to look at all the pieces and put together and what he found was totally amazing this family has been waiting for nearly 58 years when a case has been around since 1962 you’d probably think that there was no hope of ever solving it but in this case from new jersey a terrible crime against
A little girl finally received closure so put on your blue CSI gloves and we’ll learn how one of the oldest cold cases in America was finally put to rest Maurice ann shiverella was a sweet and shy girl who was barely in the fourth grade she lived in a little town called Hazelton in Pennsylvania in the USA it was quite a religious community and she was learning to play the organ and even more unusual she wanted to be a nun when she got older while her teacher was a nun so I guess that’s where she got her career goal from now for context this
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was way back in 1964 and on march 18th little Maurice left home to walk to school carrying some canned food for her teacher normally her brother and sister would also walk her there but today she was in a hurry and she wanted to get there early she left home earlier than normal that day because she was trying to get to morning mass and she also had some gifts for her classmates she needed time to do both frankly Marie sounds like she was a
Very sweet kid but she never arrived at school or at mass that morning and there wasn’t even time for anyone to raise much of an alarm later on the same day Maurice failed to arrive at school a man spotted something very terrible while giving his 16-year-old nephew a driving lesson it was late afternoon on March 18th and the man and his nephew were driving close to a coal mining pit when they saw something super strange at first they thought there was a large doll dumped in the pit but after looking just a little closer they were totally horrified of course the doll was poor little Maurice
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Some total monster had taken her from the road on her way to school she’d been tied up and violated then they’d choked her until she passed away it is so unbelievable that anyone could do something like that and her brother and sister must have felt awful too I mean it’s a cliche that nobody expected anything like this to happen in their quiet town especially not somewhere like Hazelton and remember this was way back in 1964. Maurice lived in quite a religious community where everyone knew each other so this sort of horror came totally out of the blue the fear that went across you know that that could happen you know at that particular time I’ll tell you what they made you go to bed early
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and you weren’t allowed out after dark and then you didn’t hear anything about it for a long time police gathered all the information they could including some nasty stuff left on her jacket this was exactly the kind of DNA that you’d expect in a case as awful as this only no one could really do that much with the evidence like that back then so it was down to old-fashioned police work and there were a few possible suspects but it was impossible to be sure who had really done this to Maurice even though the investigators did everything they could a recent baseball game had also brought in a lot of strangers to the community who might have had something to do with it too but no clues came from looking at those visitors either for years and years hundreds of police officers were involved with the case there were ongoing searches more possible leads and
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It never completely went away but it eventually became a cold case for a long time the chances of solving who had done this horrible crime against Maurice seemed almost completely hopeless her case stayed unsolved for almost 58 years that made it the fourth oldest cold case in the country even sadder Maurice’s parents eventually passed away leaving just her brother and sister and they’d never know who had done this it seemed like nobody in her family would ever get closure on her case and even worse the disgusting monster who had done this could still be out there hurting other girls
In 2018 the police released DNA information about what was found on Maurice’s jacket they gave that data to a company called paraben nano labs now that might sound like a company run by the bad guy in a sci-fi movie but their work totally turned things around in 2019 the nano labs added what they found in the DNA to all the free online genealogy databases genealogy is the study of family trees using interviews historical records genetic analysis and other records to obtain information about a family the databases are available to everyone who wants to look they’re often used by people who were adopted to track down their birth parents but it takes a very motivated
Person to dig deep enough into all that information and figure out someone’s background and now the DNA part really speeds that process up luckily it didn’t take long for a college student who was really into the subject to take on Maurice’s cold case eric Schubert had already been making a name for himself by digging into over a thousand family histories it’s a big puzzle that you just have to look at all the pieces and put together he even found his best friend’s birth mother for her and he didn’t even charge a fee for his services or if he does it isn’t for much more than 50 bucks basically he just loves to do this kind of research in a news item about his skills he helped a reporter trace her family history and it took him almost no time at all in just over five minutes he used google public records census data and newspaper clippings to track my family back to the 19th century your great grandfather so this is his grandmother
18th century December 1817 in Georgia so when he heard about Maurice’s tragic case and all the information that was available he just had to see if he could step in and volunteered to help the authorities to solve it I certainly didn’t know if my strategy of just reaching out and saying hey I think I know what I’m doing if I’m not stepping on any toes I’d be happy to help I didn’t think that would work but it did and I’m very thankful for that and what he found was totally amazing what eric Schubert uncovered took a lot of hard work but it led to an incredible discovery this has been a day that this family
Has been waiting for nearly 58 years because after going through some DNA from a distant cousin who is related to the suspect the police finally knew the truth all the evidence finally pointed to just one sick monster person who ended Maurice’s life a bartender with a long history of equally disgusting crimes his name was James paul forte once the authorities dug his body up to make completely sure there was no doubt at all that he was the exact sicko who had hurt poor little Maurice so they got the guy right well like me you might be disappointed to learn that James forte had already passed away in 1980 his life ended from totally natural causes and it was from a heart attack he was also identified by someone else he’d creeped on a woman named gina Donahue Connors and her friend from his car in about 1970.
this was five years after poor Maurice had passed away and even though her parents had been really strict about her leaving home alone they’d finally let gina go out with her friend this corner right behind me here and he pulled up a white car I mean my memory is just so vivid and now that I saw his picture yesterday that’s him that was just a block from where Maurice had disappeared so she was lucky to get away from the creep she and her friend had to run into a shop and hide from him and they stayed there for ages
i’m still shaking i mean even just thinking about it and at that time that’s unusual for somebody to pull up like that because this was a quiet little town nothing like that ever happened so even if Maurice’s parents were willing to forgive him as long as they had closure for what he did it’s pretty hard not to wish James had faced a lot more justice than that but I’m glad that Maurice’s brother and sister finally know the truth now that we know the individual it gives us a sense of closure, not foreclosure we’ll never have that but a sense of closure that we know the individual that did it in that the individual isn’t out committing the same crime and hurting other young girls like Maurice
like he says it’s a really good thing paul forte is no longer able to hurt anyone else i just wish we’d known a lot sooner but at least we know for sure what happened and it’s all thanks to eric’s hard work maybe he’ll even decide to make a living out of it one day and it’s really awesome that someone like eric is around to solve these awful cases and to give that closure to so many other families too there are way too many cold cases out there but this genealogy technique has caught a lot of other evil people who thought they’d get away with horrible things this reminds me of my video on the girl whose attacker is still free after 32 years although the authorities are closing in on the guy who might have done it using fibers from his car hmm dna is really interesting right and what do you think about the case eric solved will dna solve most of the cases in the future or will it just make criminals even more careful pretty scary thought so let me know what you think in the comments down below