Editorials & Other Articles

Stuart G

(38,414 posts) Mon Jul 17, 2017, 12:34 PM Jul 2017

FBI spent decades searching for mobster wanted in cop killing. Then they found his secret room.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/07/17/fbi-spent-decades-searching-for-mobster-wanted-in-cop-killing-then-they-found-his-secret-room

Washington Post...By Kyle Swenson

July 17 at 4:17 AM

When investigators picked through the tan split-level house on Maplecrest Drive, a textbook suburban street in Dartmouth, Mass., 60 miles south of Boston, they found something that wasn’t supposed to be there. Inside a closet, there was a secret door. Through the door was a small room. In the room, they found a walking cane.

The search last year shot momentum back into the long-stalled hunt for Donald Eugene Webb. A dog-loving jewel thief with roots in New England’s mafia circles, Webb was wanted in connection with the 1980 killing of Gregory B. Adams, a small-town Pennsylvania police chief, in the longest-running cold case involving a slain officer in U.S. history.

Late last week, local and federal authorities were back at the Maplecrest address, a home owned by Webb’s ex-wife. This time police dug through the backyard, eventually uncovering human remains, according to the Boston Globe.

On Friday, the FBI announced the body was Webb’s. The identification puts investigators closer to understanding how Webb was able to stay hidden for nearly four decades, even while on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list for a record-setting 25 years.

{more of article at link above}