Cold Case Files - Damn His Soul To Hell

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

The 1964 murder of 9-year-old Marise Chiverella leaves the devout town of Hazelton, PA, in fear. An intense manhunt yields numerous suspects but no killer. Five decades pass before a student moonlighting as a genetic genealogist reignites the case. Hers: Start your free online visit at forhers.com/COLDCASE for your personalized weight loss treatment options. Mint: To get the new customer offer and your new 3-month premium wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to Mintmobile.com/coldcase Progressive: Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. 

Hi, cold case listeners. I'm Marisa Pinson. And before we get into this week's episode, I just wanted to remind you that episodes of Cold Case Files, as well as the A&E Classic Podcast, I Survived, American Justice, and City Confidential are all available ad free on the new A&E Crime and Investigation channel on Apple Podcasts and Apple+,

for just $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year. And now on onto the show. The following episode contains disturbing accounts of physical and sexual violence. Listener discretion is advised. The route to school was about five to six blocks. So on that day, Maurice left alone and she disappeared. This was indeed one of the more unimaginable things that happened to this community back then. What's happening to my family's life?

Why have we been inflicted with such a horrible injury? People crying, people jumping up and down, trying to deal with the horror. Could it be someone that my parents knew, someone that Maurice knew? Could the perpetrator have been someone within our own family? It was a question the community was asking for over half a century. There are over 100,000 cold cases in America.

Only about 1% are ever solved. This is one of those rare stories. This is one of those rare stories. Amanda Christman is a reporter with the Hazelton Standard Speaker. Hazelton is roughly two hours away from New York City and Philadelphia. It's in northeastern Pennsylvania. Our roots stem from the coal mining industry. Folks here have always been blue collar, hard-working, tough people, but that said, Hazelton has some of the biggest hearts. I always wanted to be a storyteller, and as I got older I found out that I could tell other

people's stories through the newspaper while shining the light on truths. It was quite often that folks in the newsroom would talk about the Maurice Shivarella case. The big question was always, who did it? Was the question the community was asking for over half a century. It's March 18th, 1964, in Hazelton, Pennsylvania. It's a cold late winter's morning when nine-year-old Maurice Shivarella grabs her gloves and leaves

for school. Carmen Marie Radke is Maurice's sister. On the morning of March 18th, it was a normal morning. We all got up, got ready for school. The feast day of St. Joseph was March 19th. So on March 18th, Maurice was bringing canned goods in celebration of the sisters' feast day. Ronald Shivarella is Maurice's brother. I was the firstborn, Ronald Shivarella, followed by Carmen Marie. Middle brother was Barry.

The fourth individual born was Maurice and the youngest David. Maurice, who typically walked to school with Carmen, Marie, and Barry, on that particular day, she left a few minutes early because she needed to get those cangoids into her classroom, hurry up and get over to Catholic Mass by eight o'clock or she would be late.

The route to school was about five to six blocks. Maurice, however, would never make it to St. Joseph's Academy. We usually would come home for lunchtime. Barry and I came home, and Maurice didn't. At first, we thought maybe she just stayed at school because there was something at school she wanted for lunch that the cafeteria was having. My father said, no, she didn't have any plans to do that.

Go back to school and find her. So that's what they did. Devin Brutosky is a lieutenant with the Pennsylvania State Police. Carmen notified her teacher, who in turn notified the priest, who was the head of the Catholic school. Mark Barron is a corporal with the Pennsylvania State Police. They speak to the instructor that

would be her homeroom teacher. That instructor says, I haven't seen Maryse either, and I have her marked absent through the morning classes. That's when they realize something went terribly wrong. At that time, the priest made his way to the Shavarilla house, and they informed the family, at which time they started calling the police departments and notifying them that Maryse had not shown up for school that day. My father realized that something went awry with the situation. And that's when my father started looking. One of

the neighborhood women yelled over to my dad and asked who and what he was looking for and she said if you're looking for the little girl, they found her. About three miles away from the Shivarela's home, a man makes a grim discovery. Arthur Robinson and his nephew were driving in what would normally be called the stripping area, which is a coal mine area out in Hazel Township. And while he is there, he notices something

approximately 25 feet down a slope from the top of the garbage dump area. He sees what he thinks is a doll. And as he got closer, he realized that it was a little girl. He immediately left the refuse pit and called the state police. This blindsided people. This was not expected. When the troopers found the dead girl, they did make some phone calls. Back in 1964, churches were big in the Hazelton area,

especially the Catholic Church. The priests who were attached to the school that Maurice went to, they made their way out to the scene to administer last rites, which was common back in the day. And one of those priests actually knows the victim and positively identifies her as Marisa and Shavarola. News of the gruesome discovery reaches the family. I remember the priests coming to the home.

Family members were coming to the house. My father's family had a lot of connections, a lot of brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts and so forth. There was nowhere to sit. People jumping up and down because their adrenaline was pumping, trying to deal with the horror that they were digesting, people crying. So I went downstairs with my dad and tried to emotionally cope with what had happened to Maurice and what was

happening to my family. My father owned a grocery store. My mother, she was a seamstress, sewing machine operator. I was the first born, followed by Carmen Marie, Barry, Maurice, and David. Maurice was a quiet, loving little girl. When Maurice was in first grade, she had a speech impediment that became more noticeable. My mother got the services of a speech therapist, helped work with Maurice over several months, and she turned into an entirely different young little girl. She would clown around a lot. Her teasing and kidding was great.

Maurice and all of us would go to daily Mass at church. Maurice loved the music of the organ. Would always ask our parents about getting one. So that Christmas of 62, my parents prized Maurice with the organ. She was ecstatic. She wanted to be like Sister Josephine. She wanted to be a Catholic nun.

She was down in embankment. Her hands were bound. Her feet were bound. She appeared to have ligature marks around her neck. Her stockings were pulled down just below thigh level. Along with her underwear were pulled down along her legs also. She had a scarf stuffed into her mouth, which they called a babushka at the time. However, her clothing, which consisted of a blue jacket, wasn't dirty.

It appeared that she had been placed there at the bottom of the pit. And it was a very cold day. It was like 26 degrees. The original investigators were looking for any type of tangible physical evidence that they could have. They found a piece of insulation that had a footprint in it that was near the body. They collected that in the hopes that, hey, that could be something tangible. We could maybe compare that to a shoe of a potential suspect. They realized that there was a tire track down in the refuse pit, and they actually casted that, which they'll pour a casting in,

and then they'll raise the tire track out, and we kept that. At the time, in 1964, DNA evidence didn't exist, so what they were looking for would be any type of blood evidence that may have been left by the perpetrator on the victim. They also gathered all of the clothing that Maurice was wearing. So the coroner did an autopsy, and they determined that Maurice was sexually assaulted. She was strangled and beaten. They also made a determination of a bruise on her abdomen,

as if somebody had struck her very hard, and it caused some damage to her intestines on the inside. So they listed the cause of death as homicide. She was the Shivarella's child, but she could have been anybody's child. It was a very dark time for the city. The day after this crime was reported, a lot of the kids were not allowed to go out in the yard by themselves anymore. Everybody was scared that their child would be next. Anybody that's gonna sexually assault a small girl and then strangle her and leave her in a stripping pit

in the cold and the snow is just a monster. There was never a crime as heinous before in people's memory as the one that happened to Maurice Shavarilla. The day after Maurice was murdered, the family went to Catholic mass because it was a day of obligation at the church. And then we went back home.

And I remember we were nurturing each other, crying, embracing each other, because that was the only dynamic we felt was helping each other. Police questioned Maurice's family, determined to find out all they can about the little girl. They interviewed the father, they interviewed the mother of Maurice, they interviewed the brothers and sisters. The Pennsylvania State Police had asked if they could speak with my father in private, and he said, fine. So I accompanied my father. And it was at that point that the state police started

getting into more detail. In any investigation, you want to go ahead and create a timeline. You want to establish a timeline to try to nail down when the crime occurred. When was the last time that you saw Maurice alive? After interviewing them, they realized the timeline for Maurice leaving the residence was shortly after 8 a.m.

So the police were going ahead and contacting all the neighbors and people that lived within, I believe it was about a five-city block area, to try to establish what route she took to school that day. They spoke with Helen Slattery, who was a cousin to the Shivarella family. And that's when they were able to pinpoint more or less the 815 time frame of when she was last seen, heading eastbound on 4th Street. Everyone in Hazelton seems to have a theory about the murder. In the absence of an answer, there were a number of rumors going around town as to who could have done something like that. Some people believed it had been someone local because of the intimate knowledge of our geography and finding that coal stripping pit, which would be only known to somebody locally.

I remember people wondering, was it one of our neighbors? That's what the scariest part was, not knowing who and what they might do next. Who doesn't love the good things in life? Even though I enjoy a little luxury, it doesn't mean I can always afford it. Until I discovered Quince. Quince is my go-to for luxury essentials at affordable prices. I recently treated myself to their Mongolian cashmere crew neck sweater, and I am absolutely in love. At just $50, it's a fraction of what I'd pay for similar quality elsewhere. The softness and warmth are incredible,

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unites to support the chivorellas and say goodbye to Maurice. I remember the church being packed with people. The viewings, the lines were out the funeral doors home. Can you describe for us what the funeral was like? Yes. We had some private time with Maurice as she laid in her white casket and wearing her First Holy Communion dress. And that was very traumatic. That was horrifying. We see a headline where it says,

Farewell Kiss from Mother as Coffin Closed. That right there really hits home that a mother is giving her nine-year-old child a farewell kiss. Parents aren't supposed to outlive their children. The date of the funeral was a long, sad day. It was hard to see our parents grieving like that. The biggest question is why? Why would somebody do this terrible thing to Maurice?

Investigators look for similar cases in nearby jurisdictions. One case immediately stands out. There was a cold case that had occurred in October of 1962 in Bristol involving Carol Ann Doherty. She was a nine-year-old girl who was found beaten and sexually assaulted and strangled to death in a upstairs balcony of St. a nine-year-old girl who was found beaten and sexually assaulted and strangled to death in an upstairs balcony of St. Mark's Church in Bristol. The Bristol High School basketball team played a basketball game

the night of the 17th of March, 1964. There was that possibility that maybe somebody who had been at that basketball game could have been responsible for the Carol Ann Doherty homicide and now struck again in Hazelton. All of the students from Bristol who were absent the following day and who would have been of age to have committed such a crime, they were questioned. Their whereabouts were confirmed. The fans that had attended the game who drove separately from the buses that were taking fans to and from Bristol, they were contacted.

They were checked. They were cleared. The Doherty case is unsolved and police can't link it to the murder in Hazelton. Police then look at the people closest to Maurice. Her father had owned a little grocery store called the Little Market. Somewhere in the customer group could have been a person of interest. They asked him if he had any trouble with anybody at their grocery store on Alter Street. And Mr. Shiburella stated that there was a person that owed him some money and that he hadn't seen him in a while and they had an issue where he had to remove him from the

store at one point. Six days after Maurice is laid to rest, police speak to the man mentioned by Maurice's father. Bruce Hildebrand had a lot of problems with alcohol. Supposedly he had passed some bad checks to the father, and investigators wanted him to submit to a polygraph. And on March 30th of 1964, Mr. Hildebrand called up the state police barracks and said, I don't want to give a polygraph. I want to make a confession and tell you what I did.

Bruce Hildebrand was a person characterized as having a bad temper. He liked to drink. He lived close by to where the Shivarellas had resided. 29-year-old Hildebrand has already told police he has something to say about the 9-year-old's murder. The police send a car over to his house. He voluntarily gets into the car, voluntarily says, take me to the barracks. And it's there that he gives a confession of sorts to the police. He was reciting what he did

and what happened during the crime. The report states that he's crying, he's sobbing, he's very remorseful. He talks about having stolen his sister's car and coming across Murray, says she's walking to school, and him offering her a ride and her accepting the ride. He provides a detail that says she was going to mass that day. However, he didn't take her to school, didn't take her to mass.

He takes her to this abandoned dump. It's clear to investigators, however, that Hildebrand has been drinking and that's not the only problem. He said that he strangled her to death utilizing her scarf. But it turned out that she had been strangled utilizing her own shoelaces. Typically, you don't release all the information to the newspaper so that people have

the intricate details of the case. Therefore, the only thing he was providing was the general information that was released to the public. Hildebrand ultimately recants his confession. And he chalked it up to being in a state of depression at the time, and that he figured what better way to be done away with than to admitting to this crime, and that would be the end of him. The original investigators in this case did a fantastic job of trying to leave no stone

unturned. They were tracking down known sex offenders in the area. In the middle of their investigation, one person stands out. Harold Nicholas was one of those gentlemen who could have had immoral traits in the past. The troopers at the time were given the information that Harold Nichols lived near the Shivarella residence and had a sexual deviant past, and that he may have frequented the areas of the stripping where Maurice was found. They interviewed him about some of his indiscretions

in the past. They interviewed him about if he had any contact with the Shivarella family. He provided a story that had some inconsistencies, and police had asked Mr. Nicholas to come voluntarily down to the state police headquarters in Hazelton and submit to a polygraph examination. Mr. Nicholas said that he would,

and I believe he was supposed to appear on May 12th, 1964 at about 9 a.m. However, come 9 a.m. on May 12, 1964, at about 9 a.m. However, come 9 a.m. on May 12, he doesn't show up. And we got a report of a vehicle with a dead male in it near the stripping area where Maurice was found. Upon arrival to the scene, troopers identified the person as Harold Nichols,

and it appeared that he had committed suicide. The cause of death was determined to be carbon monoxide poisoning. The belief was that Harold Nichols could have been the killer because why would he commit suicide prior to coming in for the polygraph? And a lot of troopers believed that it was because he didn't want to have to confess to the crime. Upon the death of Harold Nicholas, the state police collected several hair samples from his person and they were entered into evidence for further potential use down the

road. By the end of 1964, leads in the case have dried up and the case of the girl who left for school and never came home goes cold. I know that there was frustration in me. I know there was frustration in my parents, siblings. Well, we want it to be solved. My mother and father were both very faithful to their religion. We prayed that we'd find whoever did this. I never gave up on Maurice's case. They didn't know if whoever killed Maurice was still around and waiting to strike again. So for years that was in the back of their heads. Parents became more protective of their children.

So their worlds changed quite a bit. That's how this story became intergenerational. The Shivarella family suffers another tragedy when Maurice's father dies in 2006. When my father passed, it started me thinking of Maurice's case and the questions that I've had. Like, why am I spending time on the person that murdered Maurice? He's already robbed so much of my conscious life. Then, 43 years after the murder, the investigation was reignited with a major breakthrough. With the advancement of technology, in 2007, our department went ahead and yet again sent out Maurice Shivarela's clothing.

And it was finally in 2007 that they were able to locate seminal fluid on her blouse that she was wearing. From that stain, they were able to obtain a DNA profile for a potential suspect. We knew about Maurice. We knew all these little details that made her who she was. Decades had passed, and in Hazelelton the community doesn't give up. We don't forget. We protect our kids. Investigators, finally armed with DNA evidence, entered the sample into a national database. In 2007 the suspect profile was checked against CODIS and there was no match. Since there was no match in CODIS, either the individual had been

deceased for quite some time or they were never mandated to submit to a DNA sample as required by law. Once again, the investigation grinds to a halt. In 2014, Ronald and Carmen lose their mother, Mary. My mother shared something with us that astounded us by way of, I don't understand this. I don't know why it happened. I've lost Maurice. I only had her for nine years. But you know, I'm so happy and so blessed to have had her for nine years. That mindset of a blessing in looking at the positive aspects of Marisa's life versus all the horror that occurred. Three years later there's a new investigator and new hope.

I was assigned the case in the fall of 2017 upon the retirement of the then lead investigator, Corporal McAndrew. And when you see the massive size that this case file is, there's over 6,000 pages. Corporal McAndrew had been working potentially on acquiring this new technology where we could take a DNA sample, send it to a company, and they would be able to provide us with a snapshot, if you would, of an individual's ethnicity. The DNA wasn't sent out until May of 2018,

and the report that we received back wasn't received until October of 2018. Just after the 55th anniversary of Maurice's murder, police released the phenotype sketches to the media. We had it posted as a 25-year-old, a 40-year-old, and a 60-year-old. The potential suspect was of Caucasian heritage, had either brown or black hair, with a high probability had green or hazel eyes. Therefore, we could present that to the public and maybe jog anybody's memory of what this person looked like and what they may look like now as compared to at the time of the murder.

There were several tips that were received, I would say probably upwards of around 30, that our department received. Corporal Barron ran down every tip that we received. However, none of those tips panned out and we were unable to identify any new suspect from that profile. And the disappointment was there, but we continued to move forward. That forward movement comes in an email to Lieutenant Brutosky from an unlikely source.

Eric Schubert is a forensic genetic genealogist. It was February of 2020, and I was reading up on cold cases in Pennsylvania and being that Hazelton is only about 80 miles from where I go to school, it was one of the first cases that came up online when I was looking. After reading the Maurice Shivarelli article, I just could not get this article off my mind. So I immediately said, okay, what if I just send them an email saying, hey, I've read that you were trying this. I'm not trying to step on anyone's toes, but here's who I am. Here's what I've been doing. If you think there's a chance I can help out with your case, I would love to do it.

I was selling myself as a volunteer who wanted to help. We met with Eric Schubert down at his college campus at a coffee shop and he came prepared like it was a job interview. He had a resume, he had printouts of all of his accolades detailing the successes that he had had through his very short career. After the meeting, the Lieutenant Protosky made some phone calls and the police departments that he reached out to said Eric Schubert's the real deal. Our sample, our DNA profile, had been uploaded by this company to a publicly available genealogical database, and we provided that information to Mr. Schubert,

who then started trying to put together family trees. When I first got the DNA results, what really struck me was the top match was very distant. And with that information, we were a bit worried that we would never get a relationship to the Hazelton area. Eric Schubert, though, is just getting started. I basically made a very calculated, genealogical decision to focus on one side of the family that I thought could be promising as opposed to the other.

And I was just digging into that family, digging into records. And as I did that, what happened was I actually ran into this large family that had Italian lineage. Eric contacted me and said, hey, I've found a pretty close relationship to the Hazelton area with this name of Palmeno.

To know that we're potentially getting close, it feels real good. I really enjoy finding the answer to a mystery, finding all those little pieces of evidence where in the end you sort of have that aha moment where all your work comes together into an answer. When Mr. Schubert provided us with the Palmeno name, we knew that they were from the Weatherly area which was just outside of Hazelton.

We became very excited and thinking this could be our break in the case. Discovering the name Palmeno is just the the first step for Baron and Schubert. Once we started narrowing in on this very large Italian family that had Hazelton connections, what we really had to do was just make sure that we had everyone documented genealogically. I went ahead and I did some research on the Palmetto family, and I located a family member who had informed me that he had a detailed family tree for the Palmetto family and its off branches, and he was willing to provide that to me.

And that allowed us to say, okay, we have this family, we have all these people, now it's time to get some DNA samples and see if we're on the right track. The more DNA we have, the better off we're going to be, and we can fine tune our direction that we have to take this investigation. Barron asks officers to help him speed up DNA collection. James Quiroz is a trooper with the Pennsylvania State Police.

I just remember Corporal Barron coming up to my desk and asking me if I'd be willing to assist him with the chivalrilla investigation. Corporal Barron and I were going out collecting DNA samples to include or exclude people. When we would get the results from those DNA samples. We would send them to the WIS kid, and he would tell us which way we needed to go after that. There were times where I would say, OK, we have 30 people, and for us to move forward, here's what we need to do.

So that would be an occasion where we might pause for two weeks and regroup and think about what the best plan is and then come back to it and say, okay, we're gonna ask for this sample. I think we worked very well together. I think we all knew each other's limitations at times. But at the end of the day, it was a good combination of good old fashioned police work

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After more than a year of collecting data and narrowing their search, in the summer of 2021, investigators get a break. Eric was very confident that we were moving down the right path to solving this case. We got a break in the case in the form of some publicly uploaded DNA samples in these few families that we had narrowed it down to. And we narrowed it down to sets of brothers. Four potential individuals who were all related.

Three individuals were deceased. One individual was still alive. Talking with the district attorney that was assisting us with the investigation, we had to get a DNA sample from the one remaining brother that was alive. Had we not gotten a DNA sample from that brother, it was believed that we did not have enough probable cause to exhume the body of the other brothers that were deceased. So in essence, all our chips were in the middle of the table when we went after the last DNA sample.

Trooper Kuros and I went down and met with the living individual, spoke with him. He was willing to provide a DNA sample. We obtained that DNA sample and sent that sample off to our DNA lab for processing. The results of that DNA test did not match the suspect profile that had been established in 2007. So at this time, Corporal Barron and I and Schubert were ecstatic. We had it narrowed down to two people. One brother had died several years ago. The other brother had died back in 1980.

The brother that had died in 1980 had no known children, had no widow, nothing of that sort. One of the brothers emerges as a suspect. Corporal Barron and I did criminal history checks on both brothers, found that one of the brothers had an extensive criminal history to include a sexual assault that occurred in 1974. That was similar to the sexual assault and homicide which had occurred in 1964. The team that we had assembled around us, we would have our conversations and I think in our heart of hearts we knew that There was one individual that was gonna be our suspect that man's name is James Paul Fort

We were 99% sure that James Fort was gonna be our suspect in this homicide when we got to the point Where we had the two brothers left We had the chivarillas come into the office and we spoke to them about where we were and they were elated. The problem for investigators now is that both men on the list, Frank and James Fort, are deceased. We get down to the two Fort brothers, one of whom was cremated, the other was buried. Corporal Barron and I focused on the brother that was cremated and went to that individual's widowed wife and requested any material she may have had that was left over from his demise.

She provided us two hair brushes and a razor that we were able to extract DNA from, sent that to the lab, and his DNA sample excluded him as a suspect for the known sample matched. So after about a year and a half of work, and after all those results, we came down to the one brother, one person, James Paul Fort.

To those who knew James Fort on a personal level, the way that they explained him was that he was a very nice person and that they would never have thought him to be capable of committing this type of crime. He was an Army veteran that served during the Cold War. He was a bartender. Police discovered that James Fort, who died of a heart attack more than 40 years earlier, had a dark side. The more we researched into James Fort, who died of a heart attack more than 40 years earlier, had a dark side. The more we researched into James Fort, we actually discovered a report from the 1970s where he was involved in a sexual assault of a woman. There are a lot of similarities to the sexual assault in 1974 to the homicide that occurred in 1964. Both victims had been abducted on Alter Street,

taken out to the Strip'Ns. They'd been struck about their head and face area. Still, one hurdle remains for investigators. Okay, we have enough evidence here to show that it is probably him. However, he's been dead since 1980, and he does not have children. So how can we get his DNA?

We met with the district attorney's office. We obtained a search warrant to exhume Mr. Fort's body in order to extract DNA from his body and prove once and for all that he was the person responsible for Maurice's death. At the exhumation, we removed the tomb, brought it into a garage area, and the cemetery workers were having a hard time

with the steel case that entombed the actual coffin itself. At one point, they were able to break open the metal tomb. They only broke it open about two inches, and we heard a loud metal clank. Everybody was looking around to see what had happened, and we looked down and there was about a six to eight inch by four inch crucifix that somehow made itself out of the two inch slit in the metal casing that surrounded the coffin. And we all looked

at each other and thought to ourselves, that's a sign that we have this guy and this is going to be him. On February 3rd, 2022, nearly 58 years after Maurice Shivarella's murder, investigators get the answer they've been searching for. We received the results from our DNA lab and James Paul Fort matched the DNA profile from the semen stain on Maurice Shivarella's jacket. We're always told not to get attached to a case, but you can't help it. And it's a vivid memory for everybody who lived through this, and it's a vivid memory for everybody who grew up in this area.

I was numb because I knew all this was going on. I knew why we were there and didn't want to look at this person's face. There was a sense of, I think, pride in that room. I'll never stop praising the Pennsylvania State Police for the work they've done on Maurice's case for the last 58 years. Amazing.

I don't hate the individual. The person did what he did, and it's up to a higher power than me to decide where it goes from there. I feel sorry for his family, for what they're enduring right now. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I want people to know how wonderful my parents were showing us that hate was not the way to go. Hate to them would have just destroyed us and we just had love for each other and that helped us get through all those years.

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