Pennsylvania Police Say DNA Identifies Late Trucker James Clark Sr. as Killer of Two Women in 1976 and 1977
State police say one man killed Susan Rush, 21, and Brenda Ritter, 18, in Washington County. Clark died in 2023 and was never charged; investigators are checking other cases.
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Nearly half a century after two young women were murdered in Washington County, Pennsylvania, state police say DNA has identified the man responsible: James Clark Sr., a long-haul truck driver who died in 2023. Corporal James Petrosky of the Pennsylvania State Police announced the finding at a news conference on Wednesday, November 4, 2026, WPXI and Newsweek reported. Police say testing showed that one man killed both women.
Susan Rush, 21, worked at the G.C. Murphy store at the Washington Mall. She left work at about 6:10 p.m. on Wednesday, November 24, 1976, and was expected at a church dinner for Thanksgiving Eve. Her car was later found on North Avenue in Washington, and her body was in the trunk. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled. Some reports have given her age as 19.
Brenda Ritter, 18, worked as a secretary for a company in Washington. On May 18, 1977, she left her boyfriend's home at about 10:10 p.m., during a thunderstorm, to drive home. Her car was found along Rankin Road, near Zediker Station Road, in North Strabane Township, and her body was found some distance away. She too had been sexually assaulted and strangled.
Neither case led to an arrest. Clark lived in the Washington area at the time and was 19 and 20 years old when the women were killed, according to state police, and he was never a suspect in either investigation.
The break came slowly. In 2008, evidence from Ritter's case was submitted to the state police crime laboratory, which developed an unidentified male DNA profile and uploaded it to the FBI's Combined DNA Index System, known as CODIS. The profile was searched against the database every week without a match. In 2022, the state police received grant funding through the Bureau of Justice Assistance's Prosecuting Cold Cases Using DNA program, and in May 2025 the Pittsburgh firm Cybergenetics carried out further testing. That work matched an offender DNA profile to Clark and established that the same man killed both Rush and Ritter.
Clark died of natural causes in July 2023, at 66, and was never charged or tried in either killing. Police said the families of Rush, Ritter and Clark had been told of the findings.
Because Clark drove trucks across the country, investigators are now examining whether he can be linked to other unsolved cases. No other victims have been identified. "I believe there could potentially be more victims out there," Petrosky said.