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To enjoy this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out on Patreon. Patreon.com/ForensicTales Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. When Tracy Crowe left her Ederline Township, Pennsylvania home on Saturday, August 5th, 1989, she didn't expect to be gone long.
She planned to drive to her sister's home to return a barbecue grill she had borrowed and drop off some coupons that she had clipped. But her sister wasn't home when Tracy got there, so she left the items on her front porch and returned to her car. But after that, she never made it back home and was never seen again. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 236, The Disappearance of Tracy Crowe.
Thank you.
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola. Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast with a forensic science twist. Each episode features real stories highlighting how forensic science was used, from fingerprinting to criminal profiling to DNA. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.
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Tracy was just 17 years old when she went missing in August of 1989. She was a good student who was excited about starting her senior year of high school and going to college. But when she never came home one day after stopping by her sister's house, the police suspected she had been abducted. But to this day, her body has never been found. So we still don't really know what happened to her.
Let's jump into the case and see if forensic science can do anything at all to help us figure out what really happened to Tracy over 30 years ago. In the summer of 1989, Tracy Crow was a 17-year-old just about ready to start her senior year at Halifax Area High School.
She lived with her parents, Ellen and Ivan, in Ederline, Pennsylvania, an unincorporated part of Wayne Township, about 130 miles away from Philadelphia. She was known around school as a good student and a talented artist.
The school's superintendent said this about her, quote, She's an extremely responsible student, very hardworking and quiet. She has an excellent sense of humor. I could throw a joke out and she'd enjoy it, end quote. That summer, Tracy tried to get a job to fill up some of her free time, but she didn't find one that she really liked. So she focused a lot of her attention on getting the yearbook ready for when the school started in the fall.
Not only was she an artist for the school newspaper, but she was also the editor of the school's yearbook. Since Tracy didn't have a summer job, she spent a lot of time around the house that summer. She didn't really go out that much, so she was either at her parents' house or at her older sister's house, which was only a couple miles away. This was also why her parents knew that something was wrong when she didn't come home one day.
On Saturday, August 5th, 1989, Tracy went to her 20-year-old sister Tammy's house, a trailer park about seven miles away from her parents' house. That's where Tammy lived with her husband. The plan was for Tracy to return a barbecue grill that she had borrowed and give her sister some grocery store coupons that she had clipped. After that, she was going to go right back home.
But when she got to her sister and brother-in-law's place, they weren't there. So she dropped off the grill and the coupons and was supposed to be headed back home. But something else happened because she never made it back home. The last sighting of her was at the Alex Acres Trailer Park off Pennsylvania Route 147 around 10 o'clock p.m. Her parents, Ellen and Ivan, didn't initially report Tracy missing because she didn't come home on Saturday night.
They just thought that she decided to spend the night at Tammy's house. That's usually where she was when she didn't spend the night at home. So she wasn't technically reported missing to the police until the following day, Sunday, August 6th. That's when her parents knew that something was really wrong and hadn't spent the night at her sister's house like they thought. Everyone got together and spent the entire day looking for her. Her parents, her sister Tammy, and her brother-in-law.
Then by Sunday afternoon, they found something. Tracy's car, a 1971 Mercury Comet, was found parked and locked in front of a Five and Dime store in Millersburg Square, just a couple miles away from her sister's house. It was also a popular spot for teenagers to hang out at. So Tracy's parents thought that maybe she decided to meet up with some friends there. It was a Saturday night, of course.
There were also rumors that she might have been seen sitting on the steps of a store across the street the night before. But Tracy never went anywhere without letting her parents know first. And they weren't even sure the rumors were true about her sitting on those steps.
Tracy had always been really close with her siblings and parents and never had a history of just running off somewhere. She just wasn't that kind of teenager. She had always been incredibly responsible and had some pretty big plans for the future. She was even in the top 10% of her high school class and hoped to go to college after graduation.
And if she planned to go somewhere, she didn't take anything with her. All of her belongings and cash were still at her parents' house. Her mom, Ellen, told reporters, quote, So the idea that Tracy could have just run away was pretty much taken off the table.
The police put up missing person flyers in the area where Tracy's car had been found, hoping that someone saw something. And Tracy's dad, Ivan, worked in the maintenance department of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission. So he handed out copies of the flyers to all of his co-workers. And they were also posted along the entire length of the turnpike, but again, nothing. Zero sign of Tracy.
Over the next week or so, everyone came together to look for her. The police, Tracy's parents, everyone was there. Ivan took a week off of work to look for her, and Ellen waited by the phone thinking that someone would call saying that they found her. Or maybe even Tracy herself would call saying that she was completely fine.
But after a week of searching, Tracy's parents started to fear the worst, that someone might have kidnapped her. And even worse, someone might have hurt her. Neighbors who lived by Tracy's parents started collecting money from people to start a reward fund. And by the end of September, they had raised a little over $5,000. The Pennsylvania Crime Stoppers also chipped in another $1,000, bringing the total to around $6,000.
Now, this was a pretty good plan because money usually makes people talk. If someone saw something at Millersburg Square that night, then maybe $6,000 in cash would help persuade someone to come forward. But in Tracy's case, it didn't do anything. Not even the money could bring in a single good tip. If someone knew something, they weren't saying, even with money involved.
Not long, the Millersburg police were pretty much forced to admit they didn't have anything. Millersburg police chief Kenneth Rose told reporters that they really had no idea what happened to Tracy. There had been no credible sightings of her since she was reported missing. And even though there was no evidence of foul play, he said he couldn't rule it out.
But by this point, Tracy's parents had become convinced that someone out there knew where she was. Her mom told reporters, quote, End quote.
Three weeks after Tracy went missing, the Pennsylvania State Police formed a task force to help look for her. But not even the state police could find anything. There were just zero clues, which only seemed to upset Tracy's parents even more. By January 1990, Tracy had been missing for about five months.
and employees at the plastics company in Millersburg donated money to have several large signs with Tracy's information put up in both Millersburg and Halifax. They hoped the signs would generate some fresh new leads for the police to follow up on, but again, nothing. Two months later, this is now March 18, 1990,
Scuba divers from the New Cumberland River Rescue searched a pond in Halifax after the state police got a tip that that's where her body might be. So a couple dozen divers spent two full days searching the pond, which was about 70 yards wide and 14 feet deep. But according to Pennsylvania State Police Captain Max Seeler, the search turned up empty.
Tracy's 18th birthday, April 16, 1990, came and went. Then by June of that year, so did her high school graduation. She had missed everything—her birthday, the publication of her last school yearbook, her senior prom, and now her graduation—
That summer, Captain Richard Dressler admitted to reporters that the investigation was pretty much at a dead end, saying, quote, there's been nothing, absolutely nothing in the last month or so, end quote. On the first anniversary of Tracy's disappearance in April 1990, the police seemed to change their mind about what could have happened. At first, they said they couldn't rule out the possibility of foul play.
But now they started saying they also couldn't rule out the possibility that she might have run away. Now, they weren't necessarily saying that that's what they thought happened. I think they just wanted people to know that pretty much all possibilities were still on the table at this point. Tracy's mom, Ellen, though, had become convinced that if a complete stranger had kidnapped Tracy, someone would have witnessed a struggle.
She knew her daughter just wouldn't get into someone's car if she didn't know them. And if someone grabbed her, she would have definitely fought back. So that made her believe that Tracy probably got into a car with someone that she knew. Over 100 people were interviewed during the first year of the investigation, but none of those interviews turned up anything. It wasn't until three years later that the entire country knew who Tracy was.
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This was a pretty big thing because this particular mailing was sent to more than 50 million homes across the U.S. So there was the potential to get some pretty good leads out of this. If Tracy had been abducted and was being held somewhere out of state, then maybe someone recognized her from the mailing.
Plus, before they did this, the police didn't have any new leads for over 12 months, so at the very minimum, it was worth a shot. By September 1992, the police got a tip from a jailhouse informant that convicted felon Larry Ramp was responsible for Tracy's disappearance. This was the very first time in three years that anyone in particular had been named as a suspect.
So at first, this seemed pretty good. The informant, who was an inmate in the Richmond City, Virginia jail with Larry Ramp, told the police that Ramp claimed he had abducted Tracy and buried her body near Roanoke, Virginia. According to this informant, Larry Ramp kept her senior class ring as a souvenir.
Of course, the police followed up on this, but pretty much right away, this informant's story had some pretty big holes in it, like the fact that Ramp had worked in Breezewood, Pennsylvania, a town about two hours away from Millersburg, but in 1989, he wasn't working there at the time that Tracy went missing, and there was absolutely no evidence that he had ever been in the area.
The police also searched his apartment in Virginia and found nothing connecting him to the case, not even the class ring that this informant said that he had. So eventually the police dropped the case and didn't think that he had anything to do with it. Now fast forward to November 1993.
On November 30, 1993, parts of Tracy's wallet, including her driver's license and her National Honor Society card were found. A farmer in Washington Township, Pennsylvania, found them on part of his property. The police figured that the high water from a nearby creek had washed the wallet and ID card up onto the farmland.
So they searched the area and apparently found some evidence related to Tracy's case, but never publicly said exactly what that evidence was. They never commented publicly on what they found when they searched the area. So we really don't know how important this evidence actually is for Tracy's case.
According to one of the state sergeants working the investigation, the items were sent to the state crime lab for testing. End quote. We want to determine the conditions the items have been exposed to over the years. This will give us more insight as to where they have been. It helps to limit the scope of our search. End quote. But again, we still don't know exactly what was tested or what it actually means.
In April 1994, the police went back to this same area again. Besides the state police, New York's search and rescue team plus a group of canine dogs also helped. But once again, nothing. About one month later, the police got a tip that Tracy and two other missing women might actually be in Texas.
The tipster called into the police and claimed that Tracy, Beth Miller, a girl who went missing in 1982 from Colorado, and Tiffany Sessions, another girl who went missing in 1989 from Florida, were all being held by a guy named Thomas Stewart. They were also apparently forced to work as prostitutes for him. But nothing about this tip turned out to be true.
They never found this Thomas Stewart guy, and Tracy, plus the two other girls, have never been found. So it's unclear where exactly this tipster heard about it, but either way, it didn't really seem to help. By August of 1998, Tracy's case was definitely what you would consider a cold case.
Besides Thomas Stewart and a few other people, the only person the police had as a possible suspect was Tracy's boyfriend at the time, although he wasn't really considered to be a good suspect. One theory was that maybe Tracy was on her way to see her boyfriend when she disappeared. It made sense because his parents lived really close to Millersburg Town Square.
But the boyfriend and his family were nothing but cooperative with the entire investigation. He had no reason to want to hurt Tracy. And there was absolutely no evidence anyone in his family was involved either. So that's all it ever was, a theory. I think people just assumed the boyfriend had to be the suspect because he was the quote-unquote boyfriend.
Now, nothing happened in Tracy's case for another two years. The only thing the authorities said in 2001 was that they were optimistic the case would be solved soon. The DA also announced that cadaver dogs had searched through an area of the county, but never said if anything was found or not.
They also admitted in 2001 that they had ruled out the possibility that she had voluntarily disappeared or had been taken from a stranger. The DA was quoted as saying, End quote.
For some people, it just seemed like the police wanted the public to know that they were still looking for her, or they hadn't forgotten about it. And that's why they made that announcement in 2001. But to other people, it didn't really seem that way. A lot of people wondered if the police were really doing anything at all. Now fast forward another seven years. December 2008.
The Pennsylvania State Police put up a billboard on Route 225 in Halifax to remind everyone that Tracy was still missing. It even had an age progression photograph showing what she might look like at age 35, but nothing. Fast forward to 2014, the 25th anniversary of the case.
Another age-progressed photograph of Tracy was released to show how she might look now at 42, but again, nothing. Fast forward another five years, this is now August of 2019. At least this time, something promising did happen. Two people were actually arrested, but it's a little complicated.
54-year-old Matthew Webster and his friend Holly Mallett were both arrested and charged with perjury for lying to a grand jury that had been put together to review Tracy's case. This Matthew guy had allegedly told his friend Holly in 2016 that he was involved in Tracy's disappearance. He said he raped her before he killed her and got rid of her body somewhere.
According to this so-called confession, Matthew said he and some friends were drinking around Millersburg Square when he saw Tracy that night, and he supposedly told Holly, quote, it was supposed to be just a rape and done, but then it turned out to be a lot more than that, end quote.
But on the stand in front of this grand jury, Matthew Webster completely denied telling Holly any of that. He basically said that the conversation never happened. But there's a problem for Matthew. The police had already wiretaped a conversation he had with Holly, basically telling her to change her testimony in front of the grand jury, which she ended up doing.
Both Holly and Matthew testified that they had no contact with each other before going in front of the grand jury. So these wiretaped conversations were introduced as evidence and they were both charged with perjury. But these two people were just accused of lying. They weren't actually charged with anything directly related to Tracy's disappearance, like a proposed rape or a murder.
Now, the police did search Matthew's property in Halifax, which he did own at the time, but they didn't find anything. But by that point, it had been decades. So it's very possible that if any evidence actually existed, then it was long gone by then. In December 2019, Matthew Webster pleaded no contest to felony perjury and got a four to six month prison sentence.
He was eventually given credit for time served and released almost immediately after he was sentenced. Holly Mallett also pleaded guilty to perjury in July 2020 and was sentenced to 6 to 23 months in prison. To this day, neither one of them have been charged in connection with Tracy's actual disappearance, only for lying about it in their testimony. Now, let's go to 2022.
In May 2022, someone else was named as a suspect. Pennsylvania state troopers told the public that 89-year-old Mark Eugene Warfel was officially under investigation for both Tracy's disappearance and the murder of his wife, Doris, plus a couple other sexual assaults that have happened over the years.
By the time Mark Warfel was named as a suspect in Tracy's case, he was already in custody on burglary charges since 2019. But not long after he was named as a suspect in Tracy's case, he was released because the judge handling his case, Judge Scott Evans, determined that he wasn't mentally competent to stand trial because of a dementia diagnosis.
Now, Mark Warfel looks really good as far as suspects go. In May of 2022, he was 89 years old. But back in 1989, when Tracy disappeared, he was only 56. So he wasn't really too old or too young. Warfel had been friends with Tracy's parents for years and even lived in the area.
So the police might be right when they say that they think that Tracy probably was kidnapped by someone that she knew. If Mark Warfel had lived in the area and had been friends with the family, then Tracy would have definitely known him. And if she encountered him the night that she disappeared, she just might have gotten into a car with him. So all of that makes sense.
But there are still a lot of problems here. Warfel is close to 90 years old with a really bad case of dementia. So even if he did kidnap and probably murder Tracy, would he even remember all of these years later? Is he even mentally capable of confessing to it? Well, according to Tracy's sister Kim and the police, he did confess.
The state police and the county district attorney's office arranged for Kim to go to the state mental hospital where he was being housed to talk to him while secretly wearing a tape recorder. And during the more than two-hour conversation, Warfell apparently said he knew who killed Tracy and even claimed he was the one who solved it. Now here's part of that secretly taped conversation. Warfell.
As far as I know, she was sitting up near the post office near the studio. He then blames the whole thing on a guy that he refers to as, quote, big goofus. Again, back to Warfel, quote, Well, now let's put it this way. From what I figured it out, he talked her into getting for a little ride with her car. Kim, who was driving, said,
Warfel. He was. Cause the way Ivan said when the seat was back against, about the big goofus, she was with, so I put these things together. Back to Kim. Quote. Well, how did he kill her? Warfel. I would say he choked her because she was so little. Now he doesn't exactly say how he knows this information, but still gives some details anyway. Back to Warfel. Quote.
He very likely put her in one of them mineshafts. Kim, what mineshaft? Warfell, up around Loyalton. He then says that the person who killed Tracy kept some of her clothing as a souvenir, and he's the one who told investigators where to find it.
Now, one last thing before I go on to say his last quote here, I'm reading it exactly how Warfel was talking to Kim. So some of the grammar and some of the flow of the sentences I know have been a little bit hard to follow. But again, this is what he said. Warfel, quote, I told him exactly where the clothing was. They said, where is it?
Well, I said on the second farm, you look to your left and there's a long walkway into the house. They dug it up and that's exactly where the clothing were, unquote. According to News 8, they asked the county district attorney about these claims, but the police never searched that particular property and none of Tracy's clothes have ever been found either.
When it comes to Warfell's house, the Pennsylvania State Police spent 10 days conducting a controlled demolition of the house that he owned back in 1989 in March of 2023. This was at 134 Mountain House Road in Jackson Township. They hoped that they might find Tracy's body somewhere on the property or at least some piece of physical evidence connecting him to the case.
Not only was the search conducted by the state police, but they were also joined by the Special Unit 66 Search and Rescue, Central Jersey K-9 Search and Rescue, the Georgia State Patrol, PennDOT, Fisherville Volunteer Fire Department, Jackson Township, and the County District Attorney's Office. So to say that this was a massive search would be a complete understatement.
The canine dogs that were brought in were dogs specifically trained to find human remains, which I think is the biggest part of this case. We still don't have Tracy's body. And without a body, it's going to be very hard for prosecutors to charge Warfel or anyone else with a crime. They need to find solid forensic proof that Tracy was ever on his property if they have any hope of officially charging him.
So I think that's why they put so much time and so many resources into searching this one single property. But despite everything, the time, the resources, the special teams, they didn't find anything. Tracy's body wasn't on the property. Or at least they didn't find any of her remains.
So from a forensic evidence standpoint, this was a massive letdown. Because like I mentioned, they need a body. They need forensic proof, basically proving that this Warfel guy abducted and killed Tracy. Without the forensic evidence, what do they have? Well, right now, not very much.
They have circumstantial evidence. He knew the Crow family. He lived in the area and was certainly someone that Tracy knew. So all of that matched the police's M.O. about Tracy's killer. But that's it. That's hardly enough evidence to pursue charges against him, essentially given that he also has a mental condition.
If he was deemed incompetent to stand trial for burglary charges, then he's probably going to be declared the same in a murder case. When a few news stations went to go interview Warfel in July of 2019, he said he wasn't concerned about the police search.
He apparently told Fox 45, quote, I said, what are you digging for? And they said they thought maybe the remains of Tracy Crow might be there. And I said, well, you can dig all you want, but you aren't going to find anything, end quote. And as of right now, he's pretty much right. They didn't find any remains.
So now what? Well, as of today, no criminal charges have been filed against Mark Warfel or anyone else. He's currently being housed at state correctional institution Laurel Highlands, where he's the third oldest person incarcerated in a state prison in Pennsylvania, according to Department of Correction Records.
That's where he's been since September of 2019, after the police said he repeatedly broke into a woman's house and harassed her. But as of now, he's still considered mentally incompetent to stand trial for those charges, or any other criminal charges for that matter.
According to the psychologist who testified at his mental competency hearing, Mark Warfel suffers from a major neurocognitive disorder commonly known as dementia. And because of that, he isn't capable of participating in his own defense, which of course is a legal requirement for someone to be charged criminally with a crime.
Besides the burglary charges, the police also suspect he had something to do with his wife Doris's death, although they haven't said why they think that, or what evidence they have against him. As of today, he's never been charged in that case either. As far as Tracy goes, her body has still never been found, and the only theory the police have is that she was probably kidnapped by someone that she knew. That's it.
So how can forensic science help solve this one, or help us figure out what happened to Tracy back in 1989? Well, until they can find her body, there isn't much I think they can do. Police and prosecutors can't even guarantee a guilty verdict against Mark Warfel, or anyone else really, if they don't have a body.
Because without a body, it's really hard to prove a murder even took place. Now, it's not impossible. You can still get a guilty verdict even without a body, but it always helps to have one. We also don't know how Tracy was killed, which we're assuming she was because it's been over three decades.
and there's zero evidence that she simply ran away on her own. All signs seem to point to foul play. Someone abducted her after she stopped at her sister's house that day. When it comes to DNA or fingerprints specifically on Tracy's car, I assume there aren't any. Or if there were, the police couldn't collect them or they haven't made this information public.
Because if they had collected fingerprints or DNA, they probably could have matched them to someone by now. Or they could have been used to compare against Mark Warfel. But my guess is, is that either prints weren't collected because this happened in 1989, or they looked but they didn't find any. Either way, we unfortunately don't have any forensic evidence from her car.
As of today, the prime suspect still seems to be this Mark Warfel guy, although the chances of him being charged with anything seem pretty slim. He's 90 years old, and nothing's been done that definitively connects him to Tracy's case, or at least nothing's been found. Right now, he's just some old guy with a very violent past, and he may or may not actually know anything about Tracy's disappearance.
We also don't know what connection either Matthew Webster or his friend Holly Mallett have to the case either. They were the ones who both pleaded guilty to lying, but they've also never been charged with anything else. Tracy Marie Crowe was just 17 years old when she went missing from Millersburg, Pennsylvania in August of 1989.
Everyone described her as an excellent student who was excited about starting her senior year of high school and looking forward to going to college. The police suspect that Tracy was abducted and murdered, but her body's never been found and no one's been charged in connection with her disappearance. Tracy has green eyes and brown hair, and at the time of her disappearance, she was 4 feet 10 inches tall and weighed 85 pounds.
She was last seen wearing a light blue and white floral print shirt, blue and white shorts, and white sneakers. She was also wearing a silver Timex watch and a white gold class ring with a diamond. She had a purse with a horse or unicorn on it and was carrying a Roger Rabbit key ring.
Anyone with information about Tracy is asked to contact the Pennsylvania State Police, 717-362-8700. To share your thoughts on the story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook. To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron, patreon.com slash forensic tales.
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