posted July 12, 2003 09:21 AM               

I first read the name Candace Clothier in 1987 in the 1969 issue of Master Detective.

I often wondered over the years if her case was truly connected to the Tent Girl. Northampton Township Chief of Police traveled to Georgetown to review the potential connection right after the discovery of the tent girl. As detailed below in an excert from Master Detective.

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A girl had been found dead under circumstances strikingly similar to the Tent Girl mystery. Anthony Fergione, a tall, dark and handsome police chief of Northampton Township, Pennsylvania, identified the victim in his case as Candace Clothier, a 16-year-old Philadelphia girl

Candy, a quiet, attractive, respectable girl, disappeared from her home about 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 9, 1968. More than 300 firemen and policemen combed the area near her home looking for the missing girl. She was not seen alive again.

On April 13th, some fishermen found her body, nude except for a pair of panties, tied up in a black canvas bag, a small creek in rural Northampton Township. She had been dead about six weeks, but was quickly identified.

By late June, Chief Fergione and Philadelphia detectives interviewed more than 1,000 persons and administered more than 80 polygraph tests. But they were unable to make an arrest. "We just don't have anything conclusive," Fergione said.

Then Fergione learned of the Tent Girl case. For three days he pored through every report, slide or photograph he could get his hands on. He shuffled through so many files about the Tent Girl, he knew her almost as well as the Kentucky lawmen working the case. Then he reached a startling conclusion: The case were filled with what he called "overwhelming coincidences."

Chief Fergione gave up part of his vacation and drove with his wife to Kentucky early in July. There he conferred with Detective Cornett, and they compared their cases.

Fergoine notes these similarities: "Autopsy findings were the same in both cases-no cause of death; both showed a slight discoloration of the skin covering the skull in the same spot on the right side; both bodies were wrapped in cloth bags, tied with lengths of rope from top to bottom, and the feet tucked under the torso." The Philadelphia girl wore panties; the Tent Girl was completely nude.

Also, the bodies were hurled from main road arteries near creeks and were four to six weeks decomposed at the time of discovery. The physical descriptions of height, weight, body structure and hair coloring matched closely.

In fact," Chief Fergione said, "the analysis of the bag material, we feel, will definitely link the cases, but we don't have any proof now." Circulars were dispatched to police departments across the country" "Wanted…information requested on origin, manufacturer and possible user" of the black canvas bag.

Following his Kentucky visit, Fergione took Musser's sketch of the Tent Girl to families of missing Philadelphia girls. Once again, police senses they were on the right track, and drawing closer to a successful solving of the slaying mystery. But both Chief Fergione and Kentucky's Detective Cornett were again doomed to disappointment.

None of the Philadelphia's missing girls could be identified as the Tent Girl. And with the final FBI tests in the Kentucky case proving inconclusive, no definite tie-up between the two brutal slayings was possible.

"I'm still convinced," said Fergoine, "that the extraordinary similarities in the two crimes link them some way."

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I made an attempt in the Tent Girl flurry in 1998 to resolve the possible connection to Candace Clothier.....

Didn't receive anything. I wrote to several officials and media sourcesin the state....nothing.

UNTIL......in December of 2002....I did get a letter from a man who went to school with Candace.

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Hello,

I was a schoolmate of Candace Clothier back in 1968. I didn't know her, but we were in the same school at the same time. I remember the commotion her murder caused.

I'm now 50 years old and am curious about the outcome of her case. (I lost track of it back then.) I've just been searching the newspaper archives and have followed the case through June of '68.

I came across your website and was hoping you could tell me more about it. Has her murder ever been solved? Has it ever been determined if Candace's murder and the "Tent Girl" case are related?

I've started a little page of my own about the Clothier case, just to keep track of the information I'm digging up.

Any information would be appreciated.

Thank you,

- Charlie Connolly

crc1123@voicenet.com

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This was GREAT...finally a tip to what I had been seeking for years! Charlie just created his web-site a couple of days before he contacted me.

And I also see on the site that the area is also known for Amusement Parks!

The man we consider the killer of Barbara Taylor (Tent Girl) was Earl Taylor. He was a carnival worker, hence the tent bag. Unfortunately Early Taylor passed away in 1987.

This information was not available in 1968, yet they still considered the two cases possibly related based on the similarities in the two cases. One of the questions that Charlie had for me was if I knew if the case of Clothier had ever been solved. It has not as yet and the only info on the Internet about her up until now was info that I seeded from the old Master Detective. Hoping for someone out there to come forward who might have known her. After almost 5 years some one finally did reply!

I saw articles that Charlie had found locally as he built his page. The info I saw.....was that there was a hair.....found on the body of Candace Clothier.....thought to be a hair of her killer. In 1968....it was impossible to use DNA to identify anyone. I wonder what happened to the hair? If we had the hair, we might be able to see if it was the hair of Earl Taylor through DNA.

Remembering Anothony Fergione I decided to write to the current Chief of Police in Northampton Township, Barry Pilla.

He responded immediately!

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Mr. Matthews:

I'll provide a hardcopy of your email to our detectives and if necessary someone from either our detective team or the County District Attorney's Office may be in contact with you. Our office and the District Attorney's Office has an open and ongoing inquiry into the matter.

Chief Barry Pilla

NTPD

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In the mean time Charlie Connely and I continued to compare notes. He never knew Candace personally and I was very curious of her classmates. He contacted their old high school, Abraham Lincoln High School. Candy was in the Class of '69 and they had an online year book!

They have a page dedicated to Candy either in the 1969 edition.

They included a chilling poem written by Candace shortly before her death...

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If life were merely passing by

I'd hold my breath and give a sigh

But that's not the true story I fear

This life of mine goes on for years

I'm tired of eating, drinking and sex

I just can't wait for the world that's next

If your wondering where this next world is

It's the place where our God lives

-by Candace Clothier

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In January of 2003 Charlie was contacted by fellow Philadelphian George Holmes who was very curious about the case and Charlie passed the e-mail top me. After I e-mailed George he called me immediately.

There might be a connection to Candace and other murders in Pennsylvania.

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Eight Unsolved Murders, technically speaking.

From 1968 to the mid 70s, eight girls were brutally murdered, 5 more murdered girls are connected, but all the research is not in on them. These crimes are solved, some what, but the dots need to be connected, and they will be. CarolLee David, CANDACE CLOTHIER, Dolores Dellapenna, Denise Marie Seaman, Debra Jean Delozier, Layne Dorothy Spicer, Mary Ann Lees

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So...all the info has been sent to officials in both Kentucky and Pennsylvania. After 35 years....will we soon know if the Tent Girl case and Candace Clothier is a related crime??

-Todd Matthews
Project EDAN
Media Director
DoeNetwork &
Outpost For Hope
email me at
JTMatthews@TwLakes.Net

posted April 06, 2004 10:01 PM               

I lived around the corner from the Dellapennas. I was six going on seven the year she was murdered. I remember the streets were alive with neighbors and police, some plain-clothed others uniformed.

It soon took on the air of the Kennedy assassination. No one was talking. Not even her closest friends. After pouring over the old articles as an adult it was easy to see they were all scared.

In the ninetees an article was published in The Philadelphia Inquier that they had finally gotten a confession.

Dolores was staying in Wildwood Crest in New Jersey with some friends that summer of '72. Unbeknownst to her drugs were trafficking through the house.

She left the house for a trip to Florida with her family. While she was away, the article went on to say, her "boyfriend" stole drugs and pinned it on her.

The dealers had her abducted on her way home and brought to a garage in Kensington. The tied her to a bucket seat of a car and tortured her for information she didn't have.

One of the things they reportedly used on her was a mechete. The story went on to say that the , still as yet to be indentified dealer with the mechete went too far and killed her in a way that I would rather not think about let alone say.

After realizing what they had done, the story reported that the aid of a local motorcycle gang was enlisted to help dispose of the body.

Dolores was a good girl from what I've gleaned through my research. The kind of girl you would want for a daughter.

She was an innocent amidst wolves and too naive to realize it.

When I six she was a girl who got killed on my block. As a teenager, she was a peer who died a most horrid death. As an adult, she was just a baby who died just trying to get home.

Who weeps for Dolores?

As I researched her story, I did.

As I write this, I realize, I still do.

I hope this post helps to clear up what happened to her.