State police name suspect in 1964 kidnapping, murder of Hazleton girl, 9

HAZLE TWP. — Not yet old enough to buy a beer, Eric Schubert was praised for his efforts as a genealogist in helping state police investigators at Hazleton identify the suspect in the 1964 kidnapping and murder of 9-year-old Marise Ann Chiverella.

James Paul Forte was named the suspect by Lt. Devon Brutosky, commander of Troop N criminal investigations, during a news conference Thursday.

Forte was 22 when he is believed to have kidnapped, sexually assaulted and killed Marise, whose body was found in mine strippings near Airport Road, Hazle Township, on March 18, 1964. Forte died at the age of 38 from heart failure.

Cpl. Mark Baron said Forte lived about six blocks from the Chiverella family home at 533 N. Alter St., Hazleton, in 1964.

The investigation is believed to be the fourth oldest cold case to be solved in the United States and the oldest in Pennsylvania, Brutosky said.

“For the first 40-plus years, the Pennsylvania State Police worked this case with old-fashioned police work, asking by word of mouth, ‘Who could have committed this crime?’” Brutosky said. “We had moved in a different direction here as we got into DNA evidence in the 1990s. The Pennsylvania State police was founded in 1905 so over half of our existence we investigated this case.”

Brutosky outlined the events of March 18, 1964, with Chiverella leaving her home at 8 a.m. to walk to St. Joseph’s Catholic School, and was last seen 10 minutes later, around 8:10 a.m., in the area of West Fourth and Church streets in Hazleton. Her body was found about 1 p.m. the same day near the bottom of a strip pit used at the time for refuse.

Baron explained what it took and what it meant to investigators to solve the case. Baron took over as the lead investigator in 2017 when Cpl. Thomas McAndrew and Cpl. Shawn Williams retired.

“This was a violent and heinous crime against a small child. When Corporal McAndrew retired, he told me this case was solvable. We’re always told not to get attached to a case but you can’t help it,” Baron said as he became emotional.

Baron said the Chiverella case was talked about across generations of families who live in the Hazleton area.

“This changed the way you lived if you lived in Hazleton at the time,” Baron said.

An email from an 18-year-old man in 2019

After state police held a news conference in March 2019 to release DNA genetic profiles of what a laboratory in Virginia, Parabon NanoLabs, indicated could be the suspect, Eric Schubert saw news reports and sent an email to state police to offer his assistance.

Brutosky said the email was “outside the box of state police.”

But, Brutosky “vetted” Schubert, learning he helped police near Philadelphia and Chicago solve cold cases in the past.

Schubert was 18 when he sent the email. Today, he’s a 20-year-old history major at Elizabethtown College in Lancaster County.

Schubert, who runs ES Genealogy, said he took an interest in genealogy when he was about 10 years old and has been doing genetic DNA genealogy for the last two years.

Brutosky said in 2020, Parabon NanoLabs submitted DNA into a genealogy database where it is compared with other DNA.

“We got a match, somewhere around a sixth match, a sixth cousin, a very distant match,” Brutosky said, noting the match narrowed down suspects.

Brutosky said investigators began to work with Schubert after receiving results.

“Mr. Schubert began immediately on our case and working on a family tree so we could go back and look at names of relatives of our DNA match,” Brutosky said.

The DNA evidence, bodily fluids, recovered from Marise, was linked to only a male, Brutosky said.

As Schubert began working on a family tree using the sixth cousin DNA result, Brutosky said DNA evidence recovered from a homicide case near Weatherly in 1972 led investigators to the surname Paulmeno.

“Investigators linked the Paulmeno name to a retired New Jersey State police captain, John Paulmeno,” Brutosky said.

Brutosky said the retired New Jersey state police captain referred investigators to another Paulmeno family member who is considered the Paulmeno family historian.

“Through the remainder of 2020 and through the end of 2021, we interviewed numerous relatives of the Paulmenos and acquired many voluntary DNA samples. We were fortunate enough to have most of the related family cooperate and provide use with their DNA samples,” Brutosky said.

Using the many DNA samples from the Paulmeno family, Brutosky said the list was narrowed to four suspects, one of which was Forte.

With Schubert’s genetic profiling, Brutosky said the bodily fluids found on Marise’s clothing belonged to Forte, pinpointing him as the suspect.

Many investigators assigned to case

Baron said nearly 200 investigators and troopers were assigned to the case since the beginning.

Retired Trooper Donald Good was at Thursday’s news conference sitting along with other active and retired investigators involved in the Chiverella case.

Good said he was one of the first troopers to arrive at the strip pit and they worked non-stop up to 20 hours a day, seven days a week without a day off until mid-July 1964.

Marise left home early not to be late for Mass

Ronald Chiverella and his sister, Carmen-Marie, said Marise left home early on March 18, 1964, to walk to class at St. Joseph’s Catholic School, the only time she left without walking with her two older brothers and older sister. The rest of them left their home about five minutes later.

Carmen-Marie said Marise was taking canned goods into school and wanted to drop off the cans inside the school and not be late for morning Mass inside St. Joseph’s Church.

“Our mother (Mary Chiverella) reached a point where she forgave the man who took her daughter,” Ronald Chiverella said.

Marise Ann’s brothers, David and Barry, joined their siblings at the news conference.

“We keep hearing 58 years, oh my goodness, that was a long time ago,” Ronald Chiverella said, noting investigators have continuously kept in touch each month of every year.

Carmen-Marie said her mother would often say grace before meals and would end with a prayer for the state police to solve the case.

Forte’s name was not known until 2020

Good said Forte was not known to investigators when Marise’s body was found, and Baron said Forte was not listed among the more than 4,500 pages of investigative records.

Brutosky said Forte was arrested by state police in 1974 for a violent sexual assault of a woman, which resulted in Forte pleading guilty to aggravated assault and sentenced to one-year probation.

Hazleton police arrested Forte in 1978 on charges of endangering another person and harassment. Baron said Forte’s sentence related to Hazleton’s arrest was not able to be found.

Forte was a bartender at a convention hall on Route 309 in Hazle Township for several years. He died inside the convention hall May 16, 1980, when he collapsed due to heart failure, Brutosky said.