Locals praise police for work on 44-year-old homicide

Amanda Christman, Standard-Speaker, Hazleton, Pa.
·6 min read

Apr. 2—For 44 years, expectant mother Beth Doe didn't have an identity.

Yet, the brutality of her death, and that of her full-term unborn daughter who was cut from her womb, made them upsettingly familiar to locals.

Colon's dismembered and mutilated remains, and her daughter, were found stuffed in suitcases tossed off an Interstate 80 bridge near the Lehigh River in East Side Borough, Carbon County, just outside of White Haven Borough in Luzerne County on Dec. 20, 1976.

Investigators believe they were tossed from the I-80 west overpass, but instead of plunging into the river from 300 feet above, two of the suitcases smashed on impact near rocks at the river bed. A third was found close by.

Police were called in after a local teenager made the discovery.

A degree of closure for area people began Wednesday when Pennsylvania State Police publicly identified Beth Doe as Evelyn Colon, 15, of Jersey City, New Jersey. State police at Fern Ridge also announced that day that Luis A. Sierra, 63, Ozone Park, New York, was charged with her homicide.

"I always say if you're going to commit crime, don't come to Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania always finds the person who committed the crime — sooner or later," Susan Therriault said Thursday, as vehicles raced along a stretch of I-80 visible from her store front on Main Street in White Haven.

Therriault moved to Pennsylvania from Manhattan, New York, in the 1990s to get away from congestion and crime, and opened her pet shop, Beasty Treats, in 2020.

While she was unfamiliar with the case until recently, she wasn't shocked to hear police filed an arrest warrant. It shows just how determined law enforcement is, she said.

"I really hope the family gets the justice they deserve," said Kristy Gower of Renee's Cold Cut Hut. Gower lived in the borough for 39 years and the case struck a cord with her as the mother of a now 15-year-old.

"Amazing," said Ed Jarrick of the cold case advancing.

Jarrick, of G and A Hardware, a store his family owned since 1966, grew up in White Haven and said the area was isolated from violent crime before Beth Doe became a part of the community.

"Living in White Haven, you were oblivious to think that this could happen," Jarrick said.

He was about 15 years old when the remains were found in a popular spot near the Lehigh River where generations of local children would fish and play.

It was determined Colon and the unborn child were killed less than 24 hours prior to the bodies being found, according to Standard-Speaker stories from 1976. Some of Colon's remains were wrapped in a Sept. 26, 1976, New York Sunday News newspaper and others were wrapped in a rust-colored chenille bedspread that had yellow, dark green and pink designs on it.

When Colon's body was first autopsied by Philadelphia pathologist Dr. Halbert J. Filinger, attached to the medical examiner's office, he determined she was strangled and shot in the neck. But he also determined she and the fetus were well taken care of before death. Colon was given the name Beth Doe by the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office as they already had a Jane Doe that year.

A dental chart was created, fingerprints obtained, her face reconstructed and a sketch drawn in that first year. That information was broadcast to police and published through newspapers across the country, but she still remained unknown.

At White Haven's police station, composite sketches of Beth Doe hung on the wall for years with the hope someone knew something that could aid the investigation, said Police Chief Tom Szoke. Any tips officers received over the years were passed to the investigating troopers.

He wasn't surprised troopers never gave up and that they came to a conclusion on her identity and that of the alleged killer.

"You don't get into law enforcement just to give up," Szoke said.

He said that while the original investigators did not have the technological and scientific advantages of today's officers, they had foresight to preserve evidence, which allowed "today's heroes" to make an arrest, said Szoke.

Colon's remains stayed at the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office until they ran out of room in 1983, and were then interred in Carbon County's Laurytown Road Cemetery, near Weatherly. The mother and unborn child were laid to rest under a modest white cross with a plaque that bore the name "Beth Doe."

While the investigation won't bring two lives back, after all these years Evelyn Colon's family can finally say goodbye, said Phil Jeffries, who was involved with the case as a deputy coroner when their bodies were exhumed in 2007.

"Their daughter disappeared," he said, and they never heard from her again.

Troopers said they'd release more information in consultation with the Carbon County District Attorney's Office in the "near future."

Troopers said Sierra is in custody awaiting extradition. His criminal docket doesn't yet indicate a date and time for arraignment. The district court where the case was filed isn't not yet permitted to release the affidavit of probable cause.

According to the New York Daily News, Sierra was Colon's boyfriend and the father of the child. They reported the arrest came after a DNA match last year identified Colon and lead them to Sierra. They reported that the couple shared an apartment in Jersey City before the murder, but when the victim's sister and mother came to visit in December 1976, the furniture was gone and so were Sierra and Colon.

Jeffries was there when Colon's remains were exhumed in 2007 so law enforcement could use advances in science that have aided other cases. With a trail of police vehicles, and a forensic odontologist and anthropologist, they drove to Philipsburg, New Jersey, to have the remains studied. During that examination, Jeffries said, DNA was extracted from Beth Doe's teeth and her baby's rib.

Jeffries later witnessed her re-burial and practiced care with her and her baby, who were laid to rest together during a prayer service attended by investigators.

A GoFundMe page established by Miriam Colon-Veltman on Wednesday, which raised $375 of a $15,000 goal, said Colon was taken from a family who loved her and who waited for the day they would see her and her child. She wrote that they never imaged this would be the end.

Contact the writer: achristman@standardspeaker.com; 570-501-3584

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