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Five boys who had been playing basketball in a Newark park mysteriously vanished one day in 1978, leaving in their wake one of the most sensational missing-persons cases in New Jersey history.
Now the horrific truth about their fate has finally emerged.
The boys were rounded up at gunpoint by two men over a minor marijuana theft — then tied up, locked in an abandoned row house and burned alive as the building was set ablaze, authorities said yesterday.
Floria McDowell, the mother of slain 16-year-old Alvin Turner, recalled that the last time she saw her son the night of Aug. 20, 1978, “he made dinner for me and then asked my husband if he could go out to play basketball.
“Around midnight, I said to my husband, ‘Alvin’s not here,’ ” the mom said. “We went out to look for him. The streets were dark and still. There was no movement, and I said, ‘Something’s happened.’ ”
Lee Evans, now 56, of Irvington, NJ, allegedly told cops that he and a cousin killed the boys because they suspected them of swiping a pound of pot.
The bodies of the boys — Turner, Randy Johnson and Michael McDowell, all 16, and Ernest Taylor and Melvin Pittman, both 17 — have never been found.
Cops had questioned Evans, a local carpenter, at the time of the kids’ disappearance after learning he was the last one seen with any of them. But Evans took a lie-detector test, which he passed, and was let go.
Then, 18 months ago, Evans contacted Rogers Taylor, 53, Ernest’s brother.
Taylor said Evans told him that he wanted to make a confession. Taylor contacted a Newark detective, and the pair allegedly listened as Evans admitted to the heinous crime.
“He told me he did it. Lee Evans said those words to me,” Taylor said.
It’s unclear why it took cops 18 months to arrest Evans and his cousin, Philander Hampton, 53, of Jersey City. A third cousin suspected of aiding in the murder, Maurice Woody-Olds, 48, of Newark, died in March 2008.
Police said that as part of their investigation, they used radar imaging to look for the boys’ bodies at the dilapidated housing site but to no avail.
Michael McDowell, uncle of the slain boy with the same name, said: “I always knew that sooner or later somebody was going to say something, whether it be [Evans] or someone else.”
Newark Police Lt. Louis Carrega said the boys were always treated as missing-persons cases, never as homicides.
“The kids were only reported missing after the fire, so they never put the two things together,” he said.