Halfway2sane

the investigation into the 1997 disappearance and murder of ten year old joline faye witt that attracted national attention has never been closed because there has never been an arrest.

the suspect in the twenty nine year old lycoming county, pennsylvania homicide case may still be out there, according to a former detective. the murder of ten year old joline fay witt is one of lycoming county’s most famous cold cases that drew national interest shortly after her disappearance. fifteen years after her disappearance, kenneth mains was hired as a dtective at the lycoming county district attorney’s office. joline’s case was one he was asked to review. he said he talked to witnesses and family members and it is his opinion the killer is still out there.

joline was the daughter to linda and lindsey. she was described as quiet but feisty. she had an eleven year old sister cassie and twelve year old brother lindsey jr. joline and her siblings lived with their father in williamsport, pennyslvania. thier mother linds longenecker lived in nearby muncy and had visitation rights with the children.

on saturday, july 26th, 1997, joline and her siblings visited their mother for the weekend. at the time their mother was living with her brother bruce longenecker and his wife christine and their five children at 1 grant st, muncy in lycoming county, pa. it was reported the children went to sleep about 10pm while the adults were up till about 2am playing scrabble and drinking. joline’s uncle bruce stated to investigators that he made sure and checked twice that all doors in the house were closed and locked. these consisted of front, back and side doors. at about 3am christine checks on the children and stated that everything was ok.

to get a bit of a concept of where everyone was in the house….on the first floor is where linda, joline’s mother, and cassie slept next to each other on sofa’s in t.v. room which was right by the front door. bruce jr was in a toy room which was next to the t.v. room. joline’s uncle and aunt, bruce and christine and their baby slept upstairs in the front bedroom. joline and her six year old cousin jeanie lynn slept together in one bed, in the small bedroom next to bruce and christine’s room. opposite the room where joline was, was another small bedroom where another child, clint was sleeping.

around 4am joline’s mother first stated she woke up to use the restroom, however, she later changed this stating a noise woke her up. she said she noticed all the doors were open, so she ran to vruce’s room and woke him up, telling him she thought there was someone in the house. he grabbed his revolver and checked the house but didn’t find anyone. he said he told his wife to check on the kids and he was going to make coffee. christine then screamed for help stating joline was nowhere to be found. they called joline’s father, lindsey at work (he worked the night shift) and he said to call police and he would be right there.

so now, we are going to back track a bit before anyone even knew about joline’s disappearance. at about 3am there was an off duty police officer name kevin. he had been driving by papa gallos bar and seen the owner john at the dumpster and stopped to talk to him. while they are talking, kevin observes a brown ford fairmont driving kind of slow in front of them on the main st. he notices the driver with short black hair. the driver entered the north side of the papa gallos car park and takes the alleyway behind the bar just off the rear car park. it’s important to know that the alleyway takes you straight to joline’s uncle’s house. about fifteen minutes later the car comes back up he road but now has two occupants who were later identified as steve and allan. now, interestingly allan used to date joline’s mother and he was close with joline. and steve is joline’s uncle from her mother’s side and he married her mother’s sister ruthie. and also interesting enough, he owned a brown ford fairmont car.

the brown ford fairmont was spotted by cleaning services in the hours after the disappearance. it was spotted on the street where joline’s body was later found. the cleaning service people knew steve the owner of the car and confirmed it was him.

at some point after joline’s disappearance, cassie, joline’s sister, was in the car with her uncle steve and his wife ruthie and he took a longer route to where they were going which just happened to be the road directly connected with the spot where joline’s body had been found.

shortly after joline’s disappearance, the comunity came together to search for her. volunteers, joline’s family and police searched wooded area’s in the county for more than a month to no avail. on september 6th, 1997, two hikers discovered joline’s naked and badly decomposed body on bald eagle mountain, along route 554 in armstrong township. a forensic pathologist determied the cause of death to be violent homicdide.

although several suspects were interviewed, some believed joline’s uncle bruce longenecker was her killer. the district attorney thomas a. marino had identified joline’s uncle as the person who strangled or smothered the girl in his home. he based the identification on evidence he said was obtained from two grand juries, results of dna tests and hypnosis of two girls.

joline’s parent’s were divorced, but her and her siblings stayed with their mother every other weekend. her mother stayed with her brother, bruce and his wife christina. some people believed bruce had touched joline inappropriately. but detective kenneth mains said he had not seen any evidence that bruce sexually abused joline. unfortunately bruce took his own life on november 4th, 1997, a day before investigators were to interview him. detective kenneth mains was asked…”is bruce a suspect?” to which he answered, “yes, but i can say that my analysis of the case pointed me to a different suspect who is still alive and living is lycoming couty today.” in 2012 he reeived credible information on joline’s case and followed up oni it since fit corroborated other information he had on the case. however, he was told by state police supervisors not to question anyone on the case and to instead send them to the pennsylvania state police barracks. he said he has worked side by side with joline’s sister since 2012 to help sove this case and that is where his loyalty is and always will be…with families of victims. so he says, “did i listen to the state police? absolutely not. my job was to take a second look at the case and give my unbiased opinion and that is what i did.”

the district attorney thomas marina, now a congressman, said kenneth mains is entitled to his opinion but unless he has discovered something revealing, he feels confident investigators zzereod in on the right person.

detective kenneth mains, who has had a true crime show on the history channel and now has a youtube series called “unsolved no more”, says he is still in communication with joline’s family. the leads that he developed on the case in 2012, unfortunately were only taken seriously at the time by district attorney linhardt and joline’s family. still, he commended the muncy borough police department and state police who initiall investigated the case in 1997, saying they did an outstanding job.

kenneth mains boss asked him to go on an interview with him at the priso. it was unrelated to this particular case, however, he recognied the person’s name as being related to someone ‘possibly’ connected to the crime. the police report read: in february of 2015 i did accompany chief county detective william wever to the lycoming county prison for his interview of daavid regarding a letter he sent to the district attorney’s office unrelated to the witt case. after the copletion of his interview, i asked the following questions: 1. did you brother ever do anything really bad? 2. did your brother ever murder anyone? 3. do you know the name joline witt?

david stated allan is his brother. his brother never did anything really bad. he doesn’t know if his brother murdered anyone and doesn’t know anything about joline witt. david’s demeanor was normal until i asked the question about murder and joline witt. he then began to stutter and stammer which was witnessed by detective weber. i left the room and said nothing further.

kenneth did mention the relationship of joline’s parents linds and lindsey, stating thee had previously been violence. there had been protection from abuse order’s issued. there was an incident where linda had pulled a gun on lindsey. according to a newspaper article Linda longenecker appeared at his home and began kicking and pounding on the door. when he opened the door, she threatened him with a .25 caliber black baretta. witt grabbed her wrist, they struggled and witt grabbed her throat and held her in a head lock. linda told him, “go ahead and hit me so i can shoot you.” he tossed the gun over the banister and onto the ground as williamsport polce were arriving. linda was cited for disorderly conduct. in the temporary protection order longenecker was told not to contact witt and not to go to his home or enter his place of employment. previous orders resulted in witt being directed not to stal, harass or abuse longenecker. in 1996, longenecker was given custody of the children from 4pm wednesday to 4pm thursday and alternate weekends from 4pm friday until 4pm monday. she was to pick up the children at muncy elementary school. when they were not in her custody she was allowed to call them at 8pm each night to talk with them. in a protection from abuse petition filed july 30th on behalf of her children, longenecker said witt threatened to kill her and her brother, buce longenecker, who came to her assistance following an altercation. longeneckers previous protection from abuse orderes were based on complaints of physical and sexual abuse, alleged harrassment and threats. according to longeneckers complaints, witt has a history of physical abuse against longenecker since 1994. court papers said he threatened numerous times prior to and since june 15th, 1994 to kill her if she left with the children.

there is a video by detective kenneth mains where he interviewed cassie, the older sister of joline. she said how the day before the disappearance they had gone for visitation with their mother at their uncle’s house. they liked going there because their mother let them do whatever they wanted and their dad was very strict.

detective mains makes a good point in his video at the fact when linda woke up bruce to say she thought someone was in the house, bruce said go check on the children, i’m goint to make a pot of coffee….now, the adults just went to bed at 2am and it’s now 4am. they only got about two hours sleep. they supposedly have no idea anyone is missing and they just cleared the house and no strangers are in there, why are they making a pot of coffee?

also, kenneth makes a comment about kevin, the off duty police office saying there was a private investigator as well as some other people that he may have been the one responsible for joline’s disappearance. why? the first indicator being is that he was off duty and on his way home when he heard the call come over the dispatch rado, that was being dispatched to the state police and he intercepted that call and tells the county, i recognize that address, is that the longenecker residence? they say yes it is and he says he’ll respond to the call. so the question people had was why did he jump that call. the private investigator stated keven has a hero complex and that he’s actually the one involved in the crime. kevin, after this went o to be arrested multiple times. ken mains said kevin sent ken multiple messages over the years and ken thinks kevin is carrying a heavy burden on him. not because he’s responsible for the disappearance of joline but because he was the first one there. and maybe he feels he could have done more. ken does say he disagrees with that. he believes he did everything correctly. he said kevin’s police reports were the best he has ever read.

there was a part in officer kevin’s report that he spoke with a guy name gary. he said that the whole bunch (the longeneckers) is strange. he asked what he meant and he said that the longeneckers are strange people in that they keep very odd hous and have lots of different people living in the house at different times. he said that you never know who is living there from one week to the next.

then there is the interview officer kevin had with allan. allan says he knew joline since she was a little girl. she was the silent type but always mischievious. she used to have the cutest little laugh. she was always playing around with the other kids and him. she was a sweet little girl. she was an all around good kid. she never needed to be spanked. so this interview was just a few hours after the disappearance…so why is he speaking about joline in the past tense. so he asked allan to tell him what happened to joline and allan would not answer him and just looked at the table and slouched over. kevin asked allan is joline ok and allan looked directly at him and said nothing. after a few minutes he said i hope so.

they then interviewed steve who was with allan that night and steve was not as cooperative. in one interview he claims after they got drunk at the bar he supposedly tokd allan he didn’t have enough gas money to take him home. which didn’t make sense because they supposedly lived near each other. and then claims he didn’t know where allan went. steve claims he went and slept in his car for a bit and where he said he did that kind of lines up with a previous witness who seen steves car near there. allan later claimed some guy who he didn’t know his name took him home. he drove a thunderbird.

the police report from the sewer worker states: dave stated while he was there he observed a brown or tan ford fetura being operated by a white male, 5’8″, two hundred pounds, stocky build, short dark hair. he stated that he thought the driver was acting nervous. he kept looking in the back seat. he later said in a follow up interview he knew the driver from the turkey hill mini market in muncy. he said he met him while he was recovering from his motorcycle accident. he said he sees the vehicle quite often as it’s always passing by his house.

police notes state vehicle and person description match steve and steve did recently have a motorcycle accident. they make note when they had interviewed allan he stated that his girlfriend was was there when he got home and she said it was about 4:30am. however, there were two people at his home that night..or rather morning…who were sleeping on the livingroom floor when he got home and they said it was more like 6am to 6:30am.

so then kenneth mains go on to mention how joline’s body was found nude, but she was so badly decomposed it couldn’t really be determined how she died. there were no knife cuts in the bones or crushed bones so it really seemed like a sexually motivated crime and he went back to the adults that were in the home. there is also a good point made that if it was a stranger that came into the home, why wasn’t cassie the one taken instead since she was sleeping on the sofa literally by the front door. why would someone bypass her to go upstairs grab another child to carry that child past her and her mother out the door.