Genealogy Whiz Solves 1964 Murder: The Marise Chiverella Cold Case Finally Closed

Here’s a story that starts on a cold Pennsylvania morning in 1964 and doesn’t let go for nearly six decades. It’s about a little 9-year-old girl named Marise Chiverella, a family’s heartbreak, and a case that haunted a whole town — until a college kid with a knack for genealogy did what generations of seasoned investigators couldn’t.

The Unthinkable Crime

March 18, 1964. Hazleton, Pennsylvania. Marise is a third grader with a shy smile and a habit of biting her nails. That morning, she set out alone for St. Joseph’s Parochial School, carrying canned pears and beets for her teacher’s feast day. She never made it. By early afternoon, a man teaching his nephew to drive near an abandoned coal pit spotted what he thought was a doll in the trash. It was Marise. Her hands and ankles were tied with her shoelaces. She’d been sexually assaulted and strangled.

Decades of Darkness

The case hit Hazleton like a gut punch. Cops worked it hard — over 250 state troopers, 4,700 pages of reports, suspects ranging from priests to local creeps. But the trail always went cold. Marise’s parents died without answers. Her siblings grew up with a hole in their lives, the kind that never really closes.

A Student Genealogist Steps In

Fast forward to 2020. The world’s changed, but the Chiverella case is still a raw wound. Enter Eric Schubert, a college freshman with a taste for cold cases and a head for family trees. What? Who is this kid? He’s not a cop, not a fed, just a kid who likes solving puzzles. He reaches out to the Pennsylvania State Police, offering to help. They’re skeptical — until he shows up at a campus coffee shop with a portfolio and an order for apple juice. He’s got the goods, and soon he’s working the case like a dog with a bone.

The Killer Identified

The key is DNA. Back in 2007, cops had managed to pull a profile from Marise’s jacket, but it never matched anyone in the national database. In 2019, they uploaded it to a genealogy database. Hundreds of distant relatives pop up. That’s where Schubert’s talents come into play. He spends 20 hours a week for 18 months, building family trees, tracking down connections, ruling people out. He zeroes in on a name that never made the original suspect list: James Paul Forte, a bartender with a rap sheet for sexual assault. Forte died in 1980, but Schubert’s research is airtight. The cops exhume Forte’s body. DNA from his remains matches the sample from Marise’s jacket — odds of a mistake are one in a septillion.

Forte was 22 when he killed Marise. He lived just a few blocks away, with no known connection to the family. He was a predator hiding in plain sight, slipping through the cracks for years. After the murder, he kept a low profile, got arrested for another sexual assault in 1974, did a year of probation, and died young of a heart attack.

Justice, Finally

When the news broke in 2022, Hazleton breathed a sigh of relief. Marise’s siblings finally had a name, a face, and a measure of justice. The lead investigator, Corporal Mark Baron, referred to it as the fourth-oldest case in the country to be solved using genetic genealogy. Schubert, the kid with the apple juice, skipped three college classes to stand with the family at the press conference. The cops took him out for milkshakes, so the story goes.

Conclusion and a Reminder

This case is a lesson in patience, persistence, and the power of new eyes on old evidence. It’s about a family that never gave up, a town that never forgot, and a young genealogist who proved that sometimes, the answers are hiding in the branches of a family tree.

For every Marise, for every family still waiting, this case is a message: Don’t stop looking. The past isn’t as far away as you think. Every Crime Has A Story. My Mission, Tell It.

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