State police say advances in forensic testing connected James Richard Clark Sr. to two Washington County killings from the 1970s.
WASHINGTON, Pa. — Pennsylvania State Police say DNA evidence has identified a man who died in 2023 as responsible for the killings of Susan Rush and Brenda Ritter, resolving two Washington County homicide cases that remained unsolved for nearly five decades.
The announcement gives investigators and the victims’ families an answer that earlier generations of forensic testing could not provide. Police identified the man as James Richard Clark Sr., a Washington-area resident who worked as a long-haul truck driver. Clark had not been considered a suspect during the original investigations, authorities said. He was 19 when Rush was killed in 1976 and 20 when Ritter was killed the following year. Because Clark died before investigators identified him, police cannot question him or bring a criminal case against him.
Rush, 21, disappeared in November 1976 after leaving a shopping center in the Washington area. She was expected to meet relatives at a church gathering but did not arrive. Her family reported her missing, and her car was found along North Avenue. Rush was found dead inside the vehicle. Investigators determined that she had been sexually assaulted and strangled. Police pursued leads and examined possible suspects, but the case remained open for decades without an arrest.
Ritter disappeared in May 1977 after leaving her boyfriend’s home in Chartiers Township. Her abandoned vehicle was found the next morning in South Strabane Township. A search later located her body on a nearby hillside. Investigators determined that she, too, had been sexually assaulted and strangled. Early investigative work did not identify the person responsible, leaving a second young woman’s killing unresolved in the same county within a span of about six months.
The eventual breakthrough developed through repeated testing of preserved evidence. Investigators submitted evidence from Ritter’s case for DNA analysis in 2008 and obtained an offender profile, but it did not produce a match at the time. Additional funding later allowed state police to return to evidence from the cold cases as forensic technology improved. Further testing completed in 2025 showed that DNA evidence from the two investigations came from the same offender, according to state police.
That finding changed the nature of the investigation. Instead of two unrelated killings, police had evidence pointing to one person responsible for both deaths. Investigators continued working with the available DNA evidence and eventually identified Clark. State police said his DNA was connected to evidence from both crime scenes. Authorities have not said that Clark was a suspect during the original investigations, and his name emerged only through the later forensic work.
The identification also leaves significant questions unanswered. Investigators have not established publicly whether Clark knew Rush or Ritter or whether the encounters were random. His death means detectives cannot interview him about the circumstances of either killing, his movements during the period or his possible connections to the victims. Police also cannot test an account from Clark against other evidence in the way investigators could with a living suspect.
For the families, the identification ends one part of cases that survived decades of investigative dead ends. State police said cold cases remain open to review as new testing methods become available, allowing evidence collected years earlier to be examined again. The Rush and Ritter investigations show how preserved forensic material can gain new significance long after the original searches, interviews and laboratory examinations fail to identify a suspect.
The work is not finished. State police are examining whether Clark could be connected to additional unsolved cases, though authorities have not identified any other victims linked to him. Investigators say they will continue reviewing available evidence as they try to determine the extent of his activity and answer questions that remained after the DNA identification.
Author note: Last updated November 5, 2026.