MORGANTOWN – The WVU Coed Murders is one of Morgantown’s greatest and most gruesome unsolved mysteries.
On Jan. 18, 1970, WVU freshmen and friends Mared Malarik and Karen Ferrell went missing, last seen hitching a ride after a show at the Metropolitan theater and getting into a car at the intersection of Willey Street and University Avenue where University rises up off Beechurst Avenue.
Months later, in April, their decapitated bodies were found in a wooded area off Goshen Road.
Local authors Geoffrey C. Fuller and Sarah James McLaughlin have published a book about the case: “The WVU Coed Murders: Who Killed Mared and Karen?”
The authors will discuss the book with WVU history professor Dr. Hal GorbyDr. Hal Gorby from 7-8 p.m. Thursday at Morgantown Art Party, 218 Walnut St., with a book signing to follow.
The book offers the kind of detailed, character-driven storytelling typical of true crime books, but there’s a heart behind it. It opens: “This book is about injustice, unresolved questions and violence, but it’s also about loss, the tragic loss of two young women still felt by their families and friends.”
It closes: “We don’t want to give up, but there isn’t much within our power left to do. … It’s never too late to uncover the truth.”
The book spans 410 pages and paints a portrait of the young women – 18 and 19 when they died – and the city of Morgantown at the time: the era of bell bottoms, hippies, a city troubled by crime and the failed assassination attempt of a zealous new county prosecutor.
It details what readers will perceive as a half-baked investigation by the Morgantown Police Department and the subsequent takeover of the case by West Virginia State Police. Suspects are investigated and discarded. The case is left to go cold.
In 1976, a suspect is tried, convicted, later tried and convicted again, based on what the authors are convinced was a false confession. They share the belief with a state police Lieutenant Colonel who said in 2006 there’s a killer still walking the streets while the man who confessed is doing his time.
The final section of the book is first-person accounts by the two authors of their own efforts to investigate the crime, starting in 2015.
The book draws on various news reports and first-hand accounts. Many of the news reports are drawn from the immediate predecessors to The Dominion Post: the Dominion-News and the Morgantown Post. Photographer Ron Rittenhouse and now-retired reporter Evelyn Ryan shared their memories for the book.
Rittenhouse spoke to The Dominion Post about his work at the time – he was in his first year on the job – and the day the bodies were discovered. He worked for the afternoon paper, the Morgantown Post.
So on afternoons, he said, he would go to work for a small campus store called Snacks. Three days a week, the two young women would stop by on their way to their dorm to buy chips, sodas and other items. “I didn’t really personally know them, but once I found out what was going on, I knew it was those girls.”
On the day the bodies were found, he said, officials were searching the Tyrone Road area. He had been out each day taking pictures, but on this day they suddenly all got in their cars and left. He returned to his car and learned the officers were on Goshen Road, where the bodies had been found in the woods, off in the opposite direction to the 4H camp.
He parked his car and started up the hill, about 200-300 yards in. He suddenly heard a voice, “Rittenhouse, we know you’re up there, come on down.” It was a towering state trooper who demanded his camera, then settled for his roll of film. The trooper took it and they escorted Rittenhouse back to his car.
When the editor at the time, Mickey Furfari, raised Cain with the governor’s office, State Police returned the roll, but it was exposed.
But before the trooper stopped him, Rittenhouse said, he’d climbed to an area where he was looking down at a site about 50 yards away. He could see people standing around the pile where the bodies were, but wasn’t sure what he was looking at. A person moved, he could see a leg in a pair of jeans. “I said, they must have really found these girls.”
He was able to get back to the site later, where the county coroner held a brief press conference and was driven away. The bodies were carried out.
But years after – about 25 or 30, he said – something happened he now regrets. He was covering a football game. A trooper just transferred from Beckley approached him, presenting him an envelope with something like “Coed Murders” written on it that the trooper had found while cleaning out his new desk drawers.
“Evidently it must have had my name on it, because I didn’t know him and I don’t know how he knew me,” Rittenhouse recalled.
Inside the envelope were the negatives and prints for the pictures he’d taken at the site – the confiscated roll. The police had lied back in 1970 and switched rolls on him.
He turned down the offer at the time, not wishing to get himself or the trooper in trouble. “Now if I had it to do all over again, I’d like to see what I’d took.” And now, looking back on when he was a green photographer in 1970, he knows he wouldn’t have turned over the roll in the first place; back then he was a rookie and not used to dealing with the police.
For those who appreciate stories such as these about investigations, cold cases and the Coed Murders in particular, Thursday’s book release party and question-and-answer opportunity is sure to offer more insight into this true crime mystery.
Reserved seating for the Q&A session is available with limited standing room. To RSVP, visit www.coedmurders.com. Books will be available for purchase on site.
Fuller has written for literary and commercial magazines and contributed to 25 fiction and nonfiction books. He is the author of the novel “Full Bone Moon” and the true crime books “Pretty Little Killers” and “The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese” (a New York Times bestseller), both about the 2012 murder of Westover teen Skylar Neese.
McLaughlin is a podcast producer of Appalachian Mysteria. Written and produced in West Virginia, the series covers numerous unresolved cases in Appalachia. Its first season, “Mared & Karen: The WVU Coed Murders,” received the Mark of Excellence award in radio in-depth reporting by the Society of Professional Journalists.
Gorby is a teaching associate professor of history, and director of Undergraduate Studies at WVU. He teaches courses on West Virginia, Appalachian, and American Immigration History, and is the 2020-21 recipient of the Eberly College’s Outstanding Teacher award and the University’s Nicholas Evans Excellence in Advising Award.
TWEET David Beard @dbeardtdp EMAIL dbeard@dominionpost.com
