Almost fifty years after two young women were murdered in Washington County, Pennsylvania, state police say DNA testing has finally named their killer — and he was a long-haul truck driver who had never once been a suspect. At a news conference on Wednesday, November 4, the Pennsylvania State Police announced that James Richard Clark Sr. was responsible for the 1976 murder of Susan Rush, 21, and the 1977 murder of Brenda Ritter, 18, both of whom were sexually assaulted and strangled in separate attacks about six months apart.
Source: Pennsylvania State Police via WTAE / ABC Audio (KTBB)
"Through advancements in DNA technology and continued investigative efforts, investigators were able to link James Richard Clark to the 1976 homicide of Susan Rush and the 1977 homicide of Brenda Ritter," the Pennsylvania State Police said in a statement. Corporal James Petrosky, the criminal investigation assessment supervisor with Troop B and the lead investigator in both cases, told reporters: "Testing confirmed there was a serial killer in Washington County during this time frame."
Two disappearances, six months apart
Susan Rush was last seen leaving a Washington County shopping centre on November 25, 1976 — Thanksgiving eve — intending to attend a Thanksgiving dinner, according to PEOPLE magazine's reporting of the case. She never arrived. She was found dead inside the trunk of her car on North Avenue, sexually assaulted and strangled, state police said.
On May 18, 1977, Brenda Ritter, 18, was leaving her boyfriend's home during a thunderstorm when she was attacked. Her car was found abandoned the next day, and her body was discovered about a mile away in South Strabane Township, also sexually assaulted and strangled, according to the same reporting. For decades, neither family knew who had taken their daughter.
A trucker who was never on the list
Clark, born in 1957, was 19 years old at the time of Rush's murder and 20 at the time of Ritter's, and he lived in the Washington County area when both women died, state police said. He later worked as a long-haul trucker — a life on the road that took him far beyond southwestern Pennsylvania. Detectives never treated him as a suspect in either case. He died of natural causes on July 17, 2023, at the age of 66, before investigators identified him, so he can never be arrested, interviewed or tried.
Source: Morning Honey (PEOPLE reporting)
"We don't know at this point, and unfortunately he died, so we don't have the opportunity to arrest him and interview him," Petrosky said. Investigators still do not know whether Clark knew either woman, followed them beforehand, or came across them by chance.
How the DNA trail was built
The break took decades of methodical work. In 2008, investigators submitted DNA evidence from Ritter's case to CODIS, the FBI's Combined DNA Index System, and checked the national database weekly for years without a match. The Washington County District Attorney's Office and the federal Bureau of Justice Assistance's Prosecuting Cold Cases Using DNA Program provided funding for further testing in August 2021 and May 2022, according to The Observer-Reporter. Analysis at several laboratories, using newer scientific methods, first established that one offender had killed both women — additional testing in May 2025 confirmed that link — and then pointed to Clark, whose DNA was left at both crime scenes; a second round of testing confirmed the match.
The man police identify as a serial killer spent his working life as a long-haul truck driver, moving along highways far from home for years after the murders. Police are not ruling out further victims along the routes he drove. For the many Punjabi truckers who run those same corridors, this case is a reminder that cold-case detectives still want to hear from anyone who remembers unusual incidents on the road from that era.
Could there be more victims?
Petrosky was blunt at the news conference: "I believe that once you're a serial killer, you're always a serial killer. I believe there could potentially be more victims out there." Published accounts of the period note that Rush and Ritter were two of five young women and girls murdered in the Pittsburgh area between November 1976 and June 1977; police have identified no additional victims in Clark's case so far, and the investigation remains open. Washington County District Attorney Jason Walsh and Criminal Investigation Section Commander Daniel Boyd joined Petrosky at the announcement.
The families of both victims have been notified of the identification and have asked for privacy, authorities said. "These cases never go away. They remain open. Our unit strives to try to progress these cases forward," Petrosky said, adding that investigators are constantly revisiting old evidence for retesting with newer DNA and fingerprint methods. State police are urging anyone with information about either homicide to contact the Pennsylvania State Police.
For Washington County, a largely rural county southwest of Pittsburgh along the I-70 and I-79 corridors, the announcement closes one of the region's oldest and most frightening mysteries — while opening a new question investigators may never fully answer: where else Clark's truck took him, and whether anyone else is still waiting for the knock on the door that Susan Rush's and Brenda Ritter's families finally received this week.