It was a day 57 years, 10 months, and 23 days in the making. At a press conference in February 2022, Pennsylvania State Police Corporal Mark Baron stepped up to a podium, his voice thick with an emotion he could no longer contain. He spoke of a promise kept, of a shadow that had lingered over a small Pennsylvania town for nearly six decades. “We’re always told not to get attached to a case,” he said, pausing to compose himself, tears visible. “But you can’t help it.”

The case was the heartbreaking 1964 passing of Marise Ann Chiverella. The case file had grown to over 6,000 pages, and more than 230 members of the State Police had touched it over the years. It was a wound that had never healed for the town of Hazleton. And now, it was finally closed.

The story of how investigators solved the fourth-oldest cold case in American history is not just about a technological miracle. It’s a story of relentless police work, a family’s unending hope, and an 18-year-old college student who saw a mystery he knew he could help solve.

The Morning That Changed Everything

Hazleton, Pennsylvania, in 1964, was a tight-knit coal mining town. It was a place where everyone knew their neighbors, and children walked to school without a second thought. On the bitterly cold Wednesday morning of March 18th, 9-year-old Marise Ann Chiverella was full of excitement. The next day was the Feast of St. Joseph, a major celebration at her parochial school. She had carefully picked out canned goods—pears and beets—from her father’s neighborhood grocery store to bring to her teacher, Sister Josephine.

She was a sweet, shy girl who dreamed of becoming a nun. That morning, she asked her parents if she could walk to St. Joseph’s School alone. It was unusual; she normally walked with her siblings. But she wanted to get there early to drop off her cans and attend morning mass. Her parents said yes.

Sometime between 7:50 and 8:00 a.m., Marise left her home on Alter Street for the half-mile walk. Several neighbors saw her hustling along, fighting against the fierce wind, but she declined their offers to come inside and warm up. She was on a mission.

That was the last time she was seen alive.

At midday, her siblings, Carmen Marie and Barry, came home for lunch, but Marise wasn’t with them. Their father, Carmen, sent them back to the school to find her. The teacher’s words sent a jolt of panic through the family: “I haven’t seen Marise… She’s been marked absent all morning.”

A Town’s Innocence Shattered

The search began immediately. Carmen Chiverella walked the route, knocking on doors. But just as the town-wide effort ramped up, the worst possible news arrived.

About three miles away, a 38-year-old man named Arthur F. Robinson was giving his 16-year-old nephew driving lessons. He had stopped at an abandoned coal stripping pit, an area used as an illegal dumping ground, to dispose of some ashes. As he looked down a 25-foot slope, he saw what he first mistook for a large doll. It was not a doll.

When police arrived, they found the 9-year-old girl. She was still fully clothed in her dark jacket and skirt, but her shoes were missing. They were found nearby, along with her school bag and the canned goods she had been so excited to deliver.

The details of the scene were grievous. Her wrists and ankles had been bound with her own shoelaces. A multicolored scarf had been used as a gag, so forcefully that it had dislodged a tooth. It was clear she had fought for her life, and it was evident a terrible, violent act had occurred, including an unspeakable violation.

The news ripped through Hazleton, shattering its small-town sense of security. As one local resident, Jake Ripa, would later recall, “The innocence of youth in the community was gone. That was it.” Doors that were never locked suddenly were. Children were no longer allowed to walk to school alone. The town, and an entire generation, was changed forever.

The Long, Cold Decades of Silence

The Pennsylvania State Police launched one of the most extensive investigations in the state’s history. They worked 20-hour days, seven days a week, for months. They interviewed hundreds of people. The case file swelled. But every lead turned into a dead end.

A man who owed money to the Chiverella family store confessed, but his details were wrong. Another person of interest was scheduled for a polygraph but was found in his car, having succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning before the test. It was never determined if it was an accident or related.

For 58 years, the case remained open. For 58 years, the Chiverella family lived in a state of suspended grief. Marise’s surviving siblings—Ronald, Carmen Marie, Barry, and David—grew up, had families, and grew old, all under the shadow of their sister’s unsolved case.

Their mother, Mary Chiverella, saved every sympathy card. At every Sunday dinner and every holiday, she would end her grace with the same prayer: “Please help the Pennsylvania State Police find the man that hurt my daughter.” She forgave the man she never knew. Both Mary and her husband, Carmen, passed away without ever getting the answer to that prayer.

But the police never gave up. They maintained monthly contact with the family. Every year, the case was reviewed. As the original investigators retired, they passed the files to the next generation, instilling in them the importance of finding justice for Marise.

A Whisper from the Past

The first glimmer of hope came in 2007, 43 years after the incident. Technology had finally caught up. Scientists at the state police DNA lab were able to develop a full suspect DNA profile from the genetic trace left on Marise’s jacket—the jacket investigators in 1964 had the foresight to meticulously preserve.

The profile was entered into CODIS, the national criminal database. The family and investigators held their breath. The result: no match. The individual responsible was not in the system. The trail went cold once more.

Then, in 2018, police turned to a revolutionary new field: forensic genetic genealogy. They partnered with Parabon Nanolabs, which used the DNA to create a “phenotype” composite—a digital sketch of what the person of interest might look like based on their genetic markers.

In 2019, they took the most critical step: they uploaded the DNA profile to GEDmatch, a public genealogy database where individuals upload their own commercial DNA test results to find relatives. They got a hit. It wasn’t the man himself, but a distant relative—someone who shared about 53 centimorgans of DNA, making them a possible sixth cousin.

The trail was no longer cold. It was a single, impossibly thin thread, leading back through six generations and a family tree of potentially 2,000 people.

The Unlikely Hero

In February 2020, Lieutenant Devon Brutski of the Pennsylvania State Police received an email. It was from Eric Schubert, an 18-year-old freshman at Elizabethtown College who had been a passionate genealogist since he was eight. He had read about Marise’s case and the new genetic evidence. He wrote to the police with a simple, audacious offer: “Hey, I think I know what I’m doing… I’d be happy to help.”

Most agencies might have ignored the email. But Brutski vetted him, found he had a track record of helping with cold cases, and made a game-changing decision. They accepted his offer.

For the next two years, working for free from his dorm room, Eric Schubert dedicated himself to the case. He spent up to 20 hours a week building out the massive, complex family tree from that single distant match. He worked closely with investigators, asking for new DNA samples from cooperative family members to confirm or deny branches of the tree. Slowly, painstakingly, he began to narrow the search.

A Shadow Gets a Name

The research eventually led Schubert and the police to a single name: James Paul Forte.

The name meant nothing to investigators. It had never appeared once in the 6,000-page case file. He was never a suspect. He was never interviewed.

And that was the most chilling part. James Paul Forte was not a stranger. In 1964, he was a 22-year-old man who lived in Hazleton. He lived just six blocks from Marise Ann Chiverella’s home. And at one point, he lived at an address on 14th Street, directly across from the cemetery where Marise was laid to rest. He could see her final resting place from his window.

Investigators dug into Forte’s life. He had passed away in 1980 at the age of 38 from natural causes, believing he had taken his secret with him. But his past revealed a dark pattern.

Ten years after Marise’s case, in 1974, Forte was arrested for a violent attack on a 23-year-old woman. The details were frighteningly similar: he had taken her to a secluded road and committed a grievous offense. But in a move that is baffling today, prosecutors withdrew the most serious charges. Forte pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and was given one-year special probation. He served no prison time.

Truth from the Grave

The genealogical evidence was strong, but police needed definitive proof. In January 2022, they obtained a search warrant for Calvary Cemetery in Drums, Pennsylvania. They exhumed the remains of James Paul Forte.

A tissue sample was sent to the lab. On February 3, 2022, the results came back. The DNA from Forte’s remains was a perfect match to the genetic profile found on Marise Ann Chiverella’s jacket.

The match probability was 1 in 480 septillion. As one official explained, to find another person with that profile, you would need to search over four million planet Earths.

They had their man.

A Justice 58 Years in the Making

At the press conference, the Chiverella siblings, now in their 60s and 70s, finally had their answer. “We have so many precious memories of Marise,” her sister, Carmen Marie, told the room. “At the same time, our family will always feel the emptiness and sorrow of her absence. Consequently, we will continue to ask ourselves what would have been or could have been.”

She and her brother Ronald spoke of their parents, who had prayed for this day. “Our parents expressed their sentiments a long time ago,” Carmen Marie said. “They didn’t want punishment or revenge. They wanted justice. Our family now knows the identity of her [assailant]. Justice has been served today.”

The man responsible, James Paul Forte, will never face a human court. But for the family, for the town of Hazleton, and for the hundreds of officers who never gave up, the truth was finally brought into the light. The case of the little girl who just wanted to bring canned goods to her teacher was, at long last, closed.

It stands as a powerful testament to a new kind of justice—one found not only in persistence and police work, but in the microscopic traces we all leave behind, waiting for science to catch up.