POLICE NEVER GAVE UP TRYING TO MAKE ARRESTS IN THE MURDERER OF JOYCE ANN
\nHARDING, WHO WAS SLAIN IN 1985<\/p>\n
Sunday, October 29, 1995<\/p>\n
Page: 1A
\nBy DAWN SHURMAITIS<\/p>\n
Within 48 hours of Joyce Ann Harding’s disappearance on Sept. 19, 1985,
\ninvestigators zeroed in on two suspects: members of the notoriously violent
\nWarlocks motorcycle club.<\/p>\n
But it took 10 years of dogged legwork for investigators to secure enough
\nhard evidence to implicate Mark Conaway and Larry Robbins in the shooting
\ndeath of the 25-year-old Tunkhannock woman.<\/p>\n
From the start, police pegged Conaway as the trigger man and Robbins his
\nwilling accomplice. Residents of Delaware County outside Philadelphia, the
\nbikers met Harding during a chance encounter in a Wyoming County bar.<\/p>\n
“They were always the prime suspects. There was never a question in
\ninvestigators’ minds,” says Cpl. William Strong of the state police at
\nDunmore. “It was just a matter of getting proof.”<\/p>\n
The crucial break?<\/p>\n
According to a source close to the investigation, a fellow Warlock
\n“flipped,” implicating Robbins and Conaway in exchange for a lighter
\nsentence for another crime and entrance into the federal Witness Protection
\nProgram.<\/p>\n
The Warlocks are key to the investigation. During the years, police plunged
\ndeep into a Warlocks’ world ruled by guns, drugs and bloody paybacks.<\/p>\n
Harding, say investigators who devoted their careers to exposing gang
\nviolence, was just one of six young Pennsylvania women killed during the
\nyears by biker outlaws from Delaware County.<\/p>\n
Why Harding, a data processor out for a night on the town with her best
\ngirlfriend?<\/p>\n
“The bitch got uppity,” is what Conaway told his biker buddies, according
\nto arrest affidavits filed Oct. 12.<\/p>\n
Piece by piece<\/p>\n
A tattoo, a shiny black BMW and a motel receipt provided the first links
\nbetween Conaway and Robbins and murder.<\/p>\n
Police informants told investigators the bikers came north that September
\nday to rip off a local drug dealer, but Conaway “screwed up, the whole deal
\nwent bad up there.”<\/p>\n
After checking into the Skyline Motel, the bikers turned their BMW toward
\nthe Shadowbrook Resort’s night club on state Route 6 near Tunkhannock.<\/p>\n
Inside, Harding chatted with old friends and new acquaintances.<\/p>\n
Within hours, she was dead. Her worried mother reported her missing the
\nnext morning, telling police that Joyce Ann would never stay out all night
\nbefore a work day.<\/p>\n
Witnesses later interviewed by police put the three together — at the bar,
\nnear the car, at the motel.<\/p>\n
One witness remembered Conaway in particular because of the unusual tattoo
\nof a globe on the back of his hand. Delaware County police knew that tattoo
\nand gave local police the name they needed: Mark Conaway, sergeant-at-arms
\nfor the Warlocks’ motorcycle club.<\/p>\n
Inside Robbins’ car, police found a motel receipt from the Skyline, dated
\nSept. 19, 1985. The clerk remembered Robbins from Room 202.<\/p>\n
Confident from the start and eager to get the bikers in custody, police
\ninitially charged Robbins with kidnapping, and Conaway with stealing towels
\nand damaging a light fixture in the motel room. Police fully expected
\nhomicide charges would soon follow.<\/p>\n
But the case didn’t hold up. In May 1985, insufficient evidence forced
\npolice to drop the charges.<\/p>\n
The investigation stalled. But police persisted.<\/p>\n
During the next decade, state police from the Dunmore and Tunkhannock
\nbarracks conducted hundreds of interviews, ultimately compiling a 300-page
\nfile.<\/p>\n
“You should never give up on homicide investigations,” says Lt. Frank
\nHacken with the state police at Dunmore. “It comes down to hard work and
\ndedication. That’s what solves cases.”<\/p>\n
That, and the testimony of two confidential police informants and a
\nmysterious witness who waited nearly six years to tell his story.<\/p>\n
Lackawanna County Assistant District Attorney Andy Jarbola says one witness
\nclearly saw Robbins and Conaway the night Harding disappeared. The two
\nsuspects were standing by a shiny dark BMW near a remote stretch of Routes
\n6 and 11 in LaPlume Township, just across the Lackawanna County line and 10
\nmiles from Shadowbrook.<\/p>\n
Police theorize the two men were preparing to roll an already unconscious
\nHarding 15 feet down an embankment. Once at the bottom, police say Conaway
\nfired two bullets from a .38-caliber handgun into Harding’s head. The
\nbullets later were recovered from the ground beneath her body.<\/p>\n
Five weeks later, after heavy rains flooded the creek, a fisherman stumbled
\nacross Harding.<\/p>\n
The moon-faced girl with the wavy brown hair and dimpled cheeks was no
\nlonger recognizable. Her parents, Bev and Norman, had their only daughter’s
\nbody cremated.<\/p>\n
Then, they waited for justice.<\/p>\n
After a comprehensive investigation and a two-year grand jury probe,
\ninvestigators called the Hardings to the district attorney’s office in
\nearly October. Murder charges would be filed within days.<\/p>\n
Bev Harding, who raised three children at the couple’s ranch home in
\nTunkhannock, had never given up hope that Joyce Ann’s killers would be
\ncharged. During the years, she wrote letters to politicians, death penalty
\nopponents and even Oprah Winfrey and “60 Minutes.”<\/p>\n
The Hardings couldn’t be reached for comment last week. Jarbola says relief
\nbest describes their reaction to news of the arrests.<\/p>\n
A big man with a strong grip, Norman Harding shook Jarbola’s hand hard.<\/p>\n
“He thanked us for all our hard work,” Jarbola says. “He was visibly
\nmoved.”<\/p>\n
Hell on wheels<\/p>\n
Back in their heyday, when bell bottoms and Beatles ruled, the Warlocks
\ncarved out a territory that cut across Philadelphia, Delaware and Chester
\ncounties, and southern New Jersey.
\nThe club formed six chapters, with an estimated 250 members.<\/p>\n
Police believe some members live in Luzerne County, but not enough to form
\nan official chapter. The most visible and violent chapter, according to
\npolice, is in Delaware County.<\/p>\n
Like their more prominent brothers-in-arms, the Hell’s Angels, Warlocks
\nride only American made Harley-Davidson motorcycles while sporting club
\n“colors” on denim jackets with cut-off arms.<\/p>\n
The bikers always wear diamond-shaped patches with the words “one percent”
\nin the middle, to signify they are among the 1 percent of the population
\nthat does not obey the law.<\/p>\n
Homicide. Rape. Robberies. Aggravated assault. Loan sharking. Arms dealing.
\nMurder for hire. Warlocks do it all, says Detective Paul Snyder, a former
\nmember of a special gang task force formed in 1976 to infiltrate gangs and
\nprosecute criminal members. Snyder is a detective with the Upper Darby
\nTownship Police Department.<\/p>\n
The Warlock’s specialty, according to Snyder, is the manufacture and sale
\nof methamphetamine, or speed. In recent years, the gangs have moved more of
\ntheir laboratories to rural areas in Northeastern Pennsylvania and southern
\nNew Jersey, where the strong odor from cooking speed is less likely to be
\ndetected.<\/p>\n
In the last 20 years, Warlocks have been suspects in 12 homicides in the
\ntwo-state region. Snyder can still tick off the names of four women — one
\nonly 15 years old — killed by a single shot to the head and dumped in
\nremote locations outside Philadelphia in 1976.<\/p>\n
The women knew Warlocks, either through dating or drug dealing. Police
\ndubbed the spree “The Marsh Murders.” The homicides remain unsolved, but
\nSnyder says investigators are certain that Warlocks were responsible.<\/p>\n
“They wreak havoc on everybody,” Snyder says.<\/p>\n
Warlocks’ defender<\/p>\n
One of the most infamous Warlocks is Robert “Mudman” Simon, who gained
\nnational attention in May for shooting a South Jersey policeman 11 weeks
\nafter Simon’s parole on a murder charge.<\/p>\n
Mudman served 13 years in a Pennsylvania state prison for shooting a
\n19-year-old Delaware County secretary in the head with a .38-caliber
\nhandgun and dumping her body in a strip mine near Hazleton.
\nPolice say Simon killed Beth Jean Dusenberg for acting cocky and refusing
\nto be “trained” — vernacular for a Warlock gang rape. Seven years after
\nthe 1974 murder, three Warlocks — convicted felons nicknamed Skraggs,
\nMountainman and T-Bone — agreed to testify against Simon in exchange for
\nlighter sentences on a variety of charges.<\/p>\n
Mudman’s attorney was John G. McDougall, who’s earned a reputation as “the
\nWarlocks’ lawyer” for representing numerous club members during the last
\ntwo decades.<\/p>\n
McDougall, of Delaware County, will represent Robbins and Conaway during
\ntheir preliminary hearing Friday before District Justice Carmen Minora of
\nScranton.<\/p>\n
“Certainly, a number are pretty vicious,” McDougall says of the Warlocks.<\/p>\n
But his clients, he says, are pleading not guilty to killing Joyce Ann
\nHarding.<\/p>\n
Anything goes<\/p>\n
Larry Robbins — husband, father of three, sometime tree surgeon and
\nself-employed salesman, according to his arrest affidavit — is a “bright,
\ncapable, confident guy,” says McDougall.<\/p>\n
Police say he is a career criminal, an accomplice in Harding’s murder.
\nConaway, say police, was the hit man.<\/p>\n
The two men go back a long way.<\/p>\n
In 1985, the same year Harding was killed, police records say Conaway and
\nRobbins were paid $500 by a Kennett Square landlord to force a tenant from
\nhis apartment. The tenant was beaten with baseball bats, but McDougall says
\nhis clients weren’t responsible.<\/p>\n
They took the money, but changed their mind about actually carrying out the
\nattack. McDougall thinks the landlord did it.<\/p>\n
Both men served time for conspiracy to commit assault.<\/p>\n
Snyder, who has been following the Warlocks as closely as McDougall during
\nthe years, says violence — particularly against women — is a way of life
\nfor club members.<\/p>\n
“I’ve seen some bikers beat their old lady because they didn’t cook
\nbreakfast right,” Snyder says. “They have no remorse. They just do what
\nthey got to do.”<\/p>\n
Sitting in jail<\/p>\n
Among the tattoos that cover Conaway’s entire upper body and arms is one of
\na .45-caliber handgun, which Snyder says is the Warlock sign for “the
\nenforcer.”<\/p>\n
Conaway was a Warlocks’ sergeant-at-arms, which Snyder says means he was in
\ncharge of the Warlocks’ arsenal. In 1988, Philadelphia police stopped
\nConaway’s car and found a sawed-off shotgun, cattle prod, a .22-caliber
\nrifle with silencer, electric shock gun, rubber gloves, handcuffs, $1,000
\nin cash and instructions for building a silencer.<\/p>\n
The weapons’ offenses got him a 10-year sentence in state prison. The state
\ntacked on an additional 37 months after Conaway paid a prison guard to
\nsmuggle in steroids.<\/p>\n
Conaway remains in the State Correctional Institution at Dallas. Robbins,
\nwho was free at the time of his arrest, is in the Lackawanna County Jail.<\/p>\n
Conaway, 37, of Drexel Hill, is charged with criminal conspiracy to commit
\nmurder, first- and third-degree murder and voluntary and involuntary
\nmanslaughter.<\/p>\n
Robbins, 43, of Glen Mills, is charged with criminal conspiracy to commit
\nmurder, murder in the first and third degree as an accomplice and
\ninvoluntary manslaughter as an accomplice.<\/p>\n
Robbins could not be reached for comment. Conaway refused comment. The
\ndistrict attorney is considering the death penalty.<\/p>\n
Still active<\/p>\n
Law enforcement officials in Pennsylvania and New Jersey say bikers still
\nride, fly colors, commit crimes.<\/p>\n
“We’ve seen more activity in the last 18 months than in the previous four
\nor five years,” Detective Jack Azpell of the Delaware County Criminal
\nInvestigation Division recently told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “The
\noutlaw-biker lifestyle has not changed. They’re still doing the same things
\nthey were doing in the \u201870s and \u201880s.”<\/p>\n
But during the years, some Warlock leaders died, others landed in prison.
\nThat, says Snyder, might explain why long-reluctant Warlocks finally came
\nforward to testify against Robbins and Conaway.
\n“This group uses a lot of fear and intimidation to prevent people from
\ntestifying,” Snyder says. “I’m so glad the investigators finally got what
\nthey wanted.”<\/p>\n
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POLICE NEVER GAVE UP TRYING TO MAKE ARRESTS IN THE MURDERER OF JOYCE ANN HARDING, WHO WAS SLAIN IN 1985 Sunday, October 29, 1995 Page: 1A By DAWN SHURMAITIS Within 48 hours of Joyce Ann Harding’s disappearance on Sept. 19, 1985, investigators zeroed in on two suspects: members of the notoriously violent Warlocks motorcycle club. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dawnshurmaitis.net\/works\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dawnshurmaitis.net\/works\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dawnshurmaitis.net\/works\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dawnshurmaitis.net\/works\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dawnshurmaitis.net\/works\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/dawnshurmaitis.net\/works\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dawnshurmaitis.net\/works\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dawnshurmaitis.net\/works\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dawnshurmaitis.net\/works\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}